The Laughter of the Scavengers

XIII Edition International Prize Teresa Pomodoro

Spazio Teatro No´hma

The Laughter of the Scavengers sprang from the discovery of the remains of the Trindade War on the island of São Tomé. Directed by Zia Soares and with music by Xullaji, the show brings us the memories of those who lived through the war and those who heard tales of the event, accounts that have gradually become blurred by the passage of time.

In this war, the dead were piled up in mass graves or thrown into the depths of the sea, in an exercise of violence perpetrated by the invaders who believed that by stripping the dead of their names they would condemn them to oblivion. But these dead bodies remain as a permanent symbol of the massacre, and each year, on 3 February, in order to celebrate their memory, the inhabitants of São Tomé and Príncipe engage in a ritualistic procession, parading for several hours. It is a funeral march that amplifies the spoken words, songs, laughter and sounds emitted by the convulsive bodies.

The Laughter of the Scavengers is a continuation of this entropic, celebratory march, in which the performers manipulate times and images, remove the flesh from the bones of the bodies and laugh deliriously, reconfiguring the remains and fragments from the slaughter, based on the idea of a celebration – the festivities and the liturgy, together with the ritualistic aspects of everyday life.