Christiane Jatahy's The Lingering Now at Venice Biennale Teatro

Christiane Jatahy, the Brazilian playwright and director who won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre at the 2022 Venice Biennale, presented her performance The Lingering Now (O Agora que Demora) at the Teatro alle Tese in Venice. The work closes her diptych Our Odyssey, inspired by Homer's epic poem, which began in 2017 with Itaca. Jatahy uses a blend of live theatre and cinema to address the plight of refugees and migrants, drawing on her research since 2013 with Utopia.doc. The performance features stories from Iran, Lebanon, South Africa, and the Amazon, including a visit to the Kayapó indigenous tribe where her grandfather disappeared in a plane crash. Jatahy emphasizes the audience's role as a transformative 'chorus' in the tradition of Greek theatre, aiming to create a suspended moment between past and present, reality and fiction, to change the world. The work denounces the repression in Brazil under the right-wing government and the daily threats of deforestation and illegal gold mining faced by the Kayapó.