photo: @Duarte Belo

Until it became a book, Wanted Woman went through a process of writing and rewriting.

Until it reached the stage, Wanted Woman underwent a process of scenic transformation, as well as minor censorship cuts. 

In order for a theatre text to be fulfilled, it must reach the stage. The stage (in its various forms) is the centre of communication, and the performance is, par excellence, the moment of "seeing".

And it is precisely with the verb "to see" that theatre gains meaning in Almada Negreiros' work: theatre seen is spectacle and “spectacle means to see”, as the author stated in an interview with Manuel Varella in 1968.

In this exhibition, various documents are brought together to make a possible journey of Wanted Woman from the text to the stage.

Selection of images and captions: Sílvia Laureano Costa