Ordinário – Dois Atores em 5x Sem Juros (Ordinary – Two Actors in 5 Instalments Without Interest) is an original play, developed through a devising process into playtext, exploring the myth of success in the Brazilian middle class. A year-long research of Laughter by Henri Bergson and O Brasil É Bom (Brasil Is Good) by André Sant’Anna results in a two-actors comedy study made up of four sketches and a prologue-epilogue combo – or 5 instalments – that weaves a range of comedic principles with Brazilian culture.
The audience meets a couple who has lost passion as they come up to their 25th celebration; a pair of news anchors competing on-air for the same promotion; two neighbours who come to the same priest to confess their righteous and violent conflict; and a day in the life of a couple of life-coaches, who cannot separate their professional personas from their domestic life; all of this wrapped by a parody of the 1970s World Cup hymn Para Frente Brasil (Onwards Brasil) – a bittersweet reminder of a world title celebrated by the military dictatorship. Each scene presents a microcosmos that, both on their own and as a juxtaposition, satirise, expose and criticise the neoliberal and competitive mentality of the Brazilian middle class, permeating both the personal and professional spheres, eroding the borders between private and public.
Ordinário – 2 Atores em 5x Sem Juros
