Ei! Marionetas / Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora

Ei! Marionetas - Encontro Internacional de Marionetas de Gondomar 2025

Collectors of Memories I [ COMMUNITY SHOW ]

• Projet'arte < Gondomar
• M/4 . 4mins . free access


• free access on a first-come, first-served basis
  this activity takes place cyclically during the established period


• The fascinating universe of memory collectors is a realm full of treasures and stories that the eyes eagerly grasp. In every button, every mirror, every shoe or doll, there is a fragment of time that, with the collector's dedication and passion, becomes a living testimony to the past. These guardians of memory wander the streets, peering into every corner, in search of relics that tell the stories of those who want to be remembered.
  They see in every corner an encounter, in every ruin a map, in every alley and street the life of generation after generation transforming, evolving, but retaining the essence of every gesture that shaped it.

Collectors of Memories I

Collectors start with a simple gesture, collecting an object, such as a grain of sand, which with time and patience becomes a mountain of memories that tell stories, preserve moments, and rewrite the past. Each piece in their collection is a fragment of what we once were, what we experienced, and what we built.

By collecting objects, they keep memories alive, bringing old stories to life, rescuing them from oblivion, and offering them to future generations, telling the story of a moment that someone found valuable enough to immortalize.

These collectors of memories keep fragments of existence within themselves.

what the festival has to say

A community project created for Ei! Marionetas 2025. This project was developed within youth communities and with associations that work closely with socially vulnerable young people. The project, led by artist Clara Ribeiro, is the result of workshops focused on artistic creation and theatrical play.

Projet'arte

Projet'arte's activity began in 2000 with the development of several projects called “Traditional Percussion Orchestra” in public, private and IPSS schools, the result of the idea of Prof. José Maria Rêgo.

It is on young people and children that we must focus, promoting a balance in their leisure time, be it outdoor activities, sports, cultural or other, as a way of socializing, as an alternative to the “dictatorship” of electronic social networks. Traditional music is one of the best ways of facilitating this type of activity. It's not “music for music's sake”, it's something that tells us a lot, that connects us to our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, it's an identity that we want to preserve.

In the school context, music has important advantages, it helps to control stress and anxiety, for example in assessment situations. Progress in learning music requires individual work and study, persistence and self-evaluation. Its transfer to the school context will facilitate academic success.

links

• projetarte.pt

download

that's how

We can recount this moment as if it were a story. It was undoubtedly an unforgettable moment, through work developed over time by Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora, in partnership with the Projet'arte association, an artistic and interpretive work was developed with an extraordinary team, a group of young people in vulnerable situations who today were the puppet actors.

Located in different parts of the Gondomar Municipal Library Gardens, living in houses made of paper and cardboard, they dared to share their emotional relationships with objects and memories. Thus, we began to hear stories narrated throughout the garden, and little by little, each story that ended was followed by a sincere, poetic round of applause throughout the space. In a repetition of the stories, an atmosphere of sharing was created, where the audience traveled between these storytellers.

It was an unexpected form of presentation where we could feel the intimacy of sharing between one person and another, with the rest of the audience like neighbors watching from the window the stories told in the intimacy of the space, where feelings of belonging, memory, and affection were discussed.

The structure of the narrative, which talks about collecting objects, reflects each person's story. Collectors of shoes, watches, postcards, or dolls establish a deep connection with the audience. This act of collecting to preserve memories and affections relates to a very broad and strong dimension, projecting an emotional character onto the object, valuing it to the point where it loses its meaning as an object and becomes merely a vehicle for narrating a story, the force of an idea, or the power of a feeling. At the end of the show, many of the viewers talked about their own collections, an act common to all and which often comes from a subconscious that speaks more through emotion than through awareness of the act being performed, with the notion that there is a full appreciation of the object, so close to animated theater or puppets, in this dimension of valuing an object in such a way that it becomes an idea in theatrical movement.

As this is a group of young people in a vulnerable situation, we know of their effort, commitment, and dedication, combined with the process of remembrance that these projects provoke in them and in their group. With professional companions from the association, dedicated, committed, motivated, proud of the work of their users, with family members present, we saw the emotion for a beautifully developed project. An atmosphere of well-being and poetic sharing was created, where the puppets, objects, props, costumes, and music infected the collective in a moment that should be carefully analyzed.

The function of puppetry is also one of integration through art. For over a decade, Teatro e Marionetas de Mandrágora has been doing extensive work with associations that integrate people with disabilities, as well as people in vulnerable situations, institutionalized people, victims of violence, and many other structures that use art as a vehicle to create fundamental dynamics for their users, their students, and individuals who, in some way, enjoy this form of being not only as cultural enjoyment, but also as a methodology for evolution, for approaching society, and for personal development that should be recognized as work of fundamental value.