“Chovem Amores na Rua do Matador”
The Fundação Fernando Leite Couto (FFLC), in co-production with the Culture Directorate of Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), premiered on 11 November, at the University Cultural Centre of Eduardo Mondlane University, the play “Chovem Amores na Rua do Matador”, the result of an adaptation by the Mozambican writer Mia Couto of his own short story of the same name, co-written with the Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa, which appears in their joint book “O Terrorista Elegante e Outras Histórias”. It was directed by Maria Clotilde and Vitor Gonçalves.
“Chovem Amores na Rua do Matador” has a cast made up of students and lecturers from the School of Communication and Arts of Eduardo Mondlane University, namely Angelina Chavango, Horácio Guiamba, Joana Mbalango, Josefina Massango and Violeta Mbilane. Evaro Abreu did the set design, Sara Machado the costumes and Ademar Chauque the choreography. The music is by Shigeru Umebayashi, the sound design by Pedro Pinto and the lighting by Quito Tembe. Production management was in the hands of Clotilde Guirrugo and Pablo Ribeiro.
If sponsorship is found, the live presentation of the play may extend to other Mozambican provinces
The plot portrays the story of Baltazar Fortuna who, after long years of a painful and embittered life, returns to Xigovia, with plans to kill the three women with whom he had relationships in the past. He goes in the belief that they are the source of all the misfortunes that pursue him.
In this story, Mia Couto and José Eduardo Agualusa reflect on the conflict between a peri-urban Mozambique, which hesitates between a ballast of ancestral traditions and practices crystallised in the dominant male mindset, and a new country, with galloping demographics, pregnant with young people who, with each passing day, see themselves less and less in the inherited cultural structures and the social practices they impose. The conflict between Baltazar Fortuna and his women – Mariana Chubichuba, Judite Malimali and Ermelinda Feitinha – inevitably leads to the death of a social imbalance in which the place due to women and that due to men is vigorously questioned and resolved in every choice, every attitude, every gesture of the present.
This play was created with a view to its presentation, in video format, at the second edition of the Gala Gala Festival in 2021. The showing on the 11th was its first live presentation, and also the launch of a live season which, if sponsorship is found, may extend to other Mozambican provinces.
