Creator and performer
ADUBO (Food / Fertilizer) is a durational performance inspired by João Cabral de Melo Neto’s poem Os Três Mal Amados (The Three Unloved). Conceptualised during the quarantine of 2021, it began with a provocation inviting people to write love letters and mail them to the performer. The question “Have you ever written a love letter?”, with a brief poetic context, was shared via multiple social media platforms, and spread in the street through flyers handed to strangers and left at local businesses.
Once in possession of the letters, the performer started a live stream on Youtube, in which the letters were opened, read, and eaten over the course of four hours.
Almost two years later, it was selected as part of the VIII Encontro de Teatro Universitário (ETU) Festival. This time, a letter writing station was set up during three days, so artists, audience members and bypassers could stop by to participate. This produced over sixty letters, a striking contrast to the seven received in 2021. On the fourth day, eight letters were eaten throughout the four and a half hours of performance, with the dozens of unopened letters remaining to be read and eaten in a future edition.
This work set out to explore poetically themes of consumption and affection; testimony; love; the relationship of the performer with the act of eating; and performance as an art form. The present action of eating real letters had a deep impact on the audience: the tension of being a silent observer, and to what degree are the audience members held responsible to interfere.