By Heart

What happens to stories and words when they are passed on from person to person? What powers are activated in this sharing? What new possibilities will the words bring? In By Heart, Portuguese playwright and actor Tiago Rodrigues – acclaimed voice of the international scene – teaches a poem to ten people. Giving no context, no preparation, he simply invites them to join him on stage and learn verses by heart in front of the audience. As he teaches the words to be memorized, a mix of stories starts to unfold: anecdotes at times private, at times public, at times real, at times fictional. Stories and characters intersect and unexpected connections emerge. By Heart is a piece about the importance of transmission, about the invisible smuggling of words and ideas that only keeping a text in your memory can provide. It’s about a theatre that recognizes itself as a place that deals with what you can’t measure in meters, euros or bytes.