MITbr - PLATAFORMA BRASIL
The Last Supper
ORIGINAL TITLE: A Última Ceia
ARTIST: Grupo MEXA
90 min | Age Rating: All Ages
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3/22, SATURDAY, 8PM
3/23, SUNDAY, 7PM
Centro Cultural São Paulo
SYNOPSIS
Grupo MEXA’s dinner-performance is inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) famous painting The Last Supper and the biblical event it depicts, updating the notions of death and resurrection. On stage, a group of people sits around a table for their final meal. It is a farewell: the group is coming to an end. Playing with the concepts of truth and fiction, the piece explores the performers’ lived experiences and questions how to create a lasting final image, even when that group no longer exists.
BACKGROUND
MEXA is a performance group founded in 2015 in São Paulo within the context of shelter houses. The collective explores the boundaries between reality, fiction, autobiography, and documentary theater, blurring the lines between art and life. In 2019, it received the Denilto Gomes Dance Award in the Perspectives on Black and Gender Aesthetics category. Its most recent works, Poperópera Transatlântica (2023) and The Last Supper (2024), premiered at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and have toured cities such as Berlin, Lisbon, and Hamburg. Since 2016, the group’s members have also been resident artists at Casa do Povo.
CRITICAL RECEPTION
“MEXA offers the audience a dinner, and cake for dessert. Devouring is a way of experiencing, and we devour what MEXA puts on the table: couscous, chicken, wine, cake, and their own history. A metatheatrical piece is also an anthropophagic exercise.” Fernando Pivotto, Tudo, Menos Uma Crítica
“Through a frenetic dramaturgy and a modern reinterpretation of The Last Supper [Leonardo da Vinci’s painting], MEXA transforms theater into an explosive celebration.” Louis Thiébaut, RTBF Actus
“The extraordinary energy of The Last Supper perhaps comes from the act of founding a new and entirely absurd church—their own. The succession of events, in the Teatro Oficina sense of the term, that the show generates at every moment; the avenues of seduction, the nuances of acting, the transitions between the most vulgar and the most elevated, the communion with the audience, and the theatrical beauty, are probably due to the two pillars of this parodic-religious edifice whose foundation we witness:
a) the absence of resentment regarding the traumas and life histories of each believer (that is, the actors and technical team), and
b) the fearless and non-blasphemous appropriation of Christian religious discourse.”
CREDITS
Created by: MEXA
Direction & Dramaturgy: João Turchi
Performance & Co-Creation: Aivan, Alê Tradução, Dourado, Patrícia Borges, Suzy Muniz, Tatiane Arcanjo
Video Performer, Video Creation & Technical Direction: Laysa Elias
Assistant Director & Movement Director, Performance: Lucas Heymanns
Soundtrack, Sound Design & Performance: Podeserdesligado
Lighting & Performance: Iara Izidoro
Executive Production: Francesca Tedeschi
General Production: Cibelle Lima
Production & Art Direction: Lu Mugayar
Costume Design: Anuro Anuro, Cacau Francisco
Set Design: Vão
Vocal Direction: Dourado
Contributors to the Creative Process: Anita Silvia, Daniela Pinheiro, Gustavo Colombini
Dramaturgical Collaboration: Olivia Ardui
Artistic Research & Consulting: Guilherme Giufrida
Production: MEXA
Co-Production: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Casa do Povo, Kampnagel – Internationales Zentrum für Schönere Künste