INTERVIEW Tiago Rodrigues: "Above all, theatre is about not dying"

‘No Yogurt for the Dead’ is based on the last episode of your father’s life. Why did you decide  to base this play on such a personal story?

Tiago Rodrigues: “My father Rogério was a journalist for forty years. When he went to hospital, shortly before his death, he asked me to bring a notebook. He wanted to document his dehumanising experience there, as well as the stories of other patients, of caregivers and visitors. Journalism was his way of dying.”

“He wrote in the notebook for hours and hours. But when I opened it after he died, it only had a title: 'No Yogurt for the Dead'. Everything else was scribbles. Not even badly written words, only lines, streepkes as they say in Dutch.”

“What was the article he wanted to write? Was he aware that his hand became a useless tool? Which, for my father must have been a huge defeat. Or maybe he lived in a fantasy world thinking he was actually writing? The questions haunted me for weeks. Until I realised I had to finish what he started. Not as a journalist, but as a theatre maker.”

Is the play a homage to your father?

“We mix facts with fiction, so I don’t consider it a homage. Above all, the play aims to find warmth, humanity and even joy in remembering loved ones. The great Heiner Müller said: When we do theatre, we dialogue with the dead. For this piece, I am working together with my father. The same way I have worked before with Chekhov or Tolstoy or Virginia Woolf. .”

How would you describe your father as a person?

(hesitates) “He was born in 1947 and grew up in a fascist dictatorship. He fled from persecution by the police and emigrated to France. His brother died in the colonial war in Africa. He grew up poor and in a small village… all these life events gave him a very strong sense of loyalty, honesty and courage. The fact that the rest of the world was not composed of equally honest, almost heroic people could make him bitter. He often was an introvert, severe guy but with a lot of great qualities. For one, he was very knowledgeable and cultivated.”

How was your relationship with him?

“We had a troubled relationship at times. Expressing love was not his strong suit, which made it hard for me growing up. My father very much belonged to a generation for which being able to express your emotions was not a top priority in upbringing or education.”

“Yet our story is also one of reconciliation. I wouldn’t say we were privileged, the overall situation was way too sad, but I do feel blessed that his time in hospital gave us the chance to deal with our past struggles. To realise that what we might have hated about each other, were nothing more than details. We got to ask the tough questions and I’m glad we did. After all, coming to terms with his life, what a dying person has to do, is unimaginable.”

Have you inherited his disgust for yoghurt?

“No, on the contrary, I have always loved yoghurt. For my father it was something that only children ate. But when he became sick, his taste changed. He was served yoghurt all the time in the hospital and grew to like it.”

“All of a sudden, he had these really strong views, calling it fresh and tasty, preferring the vanilla ones,… We made a lot of jokes about that. Which is probably why he decided to title his final article 'No Yogurt for the Dead'.”

The creation of this play brings you back to Belgium. A country with an arts scene that left a mark on the beginning of your career.

“Yes, I actually had a flashback a few days ago when I arrived in Ghent. Walking around, I passed the Minard venue, where I performed Point Blank  in the nineties with the Flemish collective STAN. It was my second performance as a professional actor, I was only 21.”

“On the first night, the play had already started but I was not in the first scene. I ran out twice to search for my girlfriend who traveled from Portugal but ran late. I got here in anyway. It was all very unprofessional yet very romantic.”

“I have worked intensively with STAN in my twenties. It was my real theatre school. I even quit theatre school in Lisbon to work with the collective, like the village child running away with the circus. The only thing they tried to teach us in Lisbon was how to domesticate your body and mind to serve a director. I hated it and I was really bad at it.”

What attracted you so much in STAN?

“The collectiveness of their process. Every single actor working on the piece was allowed not only to express himself but also to make the piece his or her own. STAN also taught me that love of text is a form of freedom, not a prison. You are allowed to use the words of others to express yourself. With STAN, I found my theatre. It finally made sense to me. Before, I loved theatre, but I hated doing it. Suddenly, I had fun.”

How do you give your actors enough freedom to contribute and express?

“For one, I write during rehearsals. What I write, is inspired by the actors, by their ideas, struggles and suggestions. Outside of rehearsals, I have no discipline and no pleasure in writing, I don’t even do it. But once I get to connect and experiment with the cast, my head explodes.”

“In directing, I never tell actors what to do exactly. I listen, I suggest, and I come up with ideas if no one else has any. But it’s always a dialogue. Inside a space of freedom and contribution. We work towards a common imagination, not just towards mine.”

“Ever since I was a teenager, I have been doing theatre not to be alone”, you said before. Is it really that simple?

“My ‘why’ to doing theatre, in whatever form, is to not be alone. But not being alone is also a political thing. It’s not only about the loneliness of a Portuguese teenager that starts acting because he is fascinated by theatre lovers. With theatre, we share our time and an imagination. We share invisible stuff that we bring to life together. It’s an extremely powerful thing and one of the great sources of happiness in my life.”

“Theatre is on the side of life. Watching a TV-screen in your house, away from other people, comes close to dying. Theatre goes towards living.”

The cast of ‘No Yogurt for the Dead’ is formed among others by three Portuguese artists that are composer or singer. How important is music in this performance?

“I like the idea of finding the lightness in things, finding joy in even the saddest stories. Music helps a lot with that. The soundtrack is inspired by an old-school, fado-like tradition. We use the strategy of creating a very precise atmosphere with the simple combination of an electric guitar and a voice.”

“On stage, we have Hélder Gonçalves, who is one the great composers of modern music in Portugal, Manuela Azevedo, who is very well known in Portugal as a singer but also an amazing actress, and Beatriz Brás, known as an actress, but also a great singer. The Belgian actress Lisah Adeage completes them perfectly.”

Lisah Adeaga is the narrator in the piece. She also plays the character of the nurse that took care of your father in hospital. He nicknamed her “the worst nurse in the world”.

“My father could be blunt. His nickname at the newspaper was ‘the torpedo’. But it was also his taste in humor. When he went to hospital for the last time, he said to the nurse: ‘I respect you as a human being and perhaps you are a very nice person. But as a nurse, you are the worst.' She didn’t like him less after that remark, by the way, she liked him more. I have always found it a funny and endearing anecdote.”

Mixing different layers of fact and fiction is an essential part of your work. What do you gain by this?

“Enrique Vila-Matas, a great Spanish writer, stated that everything is between reality and fiction. And he’s right. Even the truth is. So mixing fact and fiction is necessary to make a truthful piece while – at the same time – leave enough space for the audience to imagine, to co-create.”

“I use fiction because telling stories is my way of participating in the world. But l also need reality because I have an ambition, an urge of transforming the world, even if it’s just a little bit. With No Yogurt for the Dead, I am trying to write the article my father never finished. Something will change from the premiere onward. The article will be written. It will exist. It’s a very small, but for me, very significant victory over death.”