O Republicário

Let’s create a Republic. What do we need? An anthem. Check. A Constitution, guaranteeing rights and duties. Check. Are we missing anything?
Maybe a national flag. With two colours and 12 little circles representing the 12 cities of the Republic of I-Don’t-Know-How-Many, won in the Revolution that freed this Country from the yoke of… the petty tyrant, the seven-stomached Monster who filled his belly with the citizens’ slave labour.

In this brand-new Republic, we tell the story of an encyclopaedia salesman who rides, perched on his famous rusty bicycle nicknamed “Princesa”, from one end of the country to the other, and who loves listening to fado desafiado [improvised, duelling-style fado] on the radio.

Everything was going well in the best of all possible Republics, but one day everything seems to fall apart. Suddenly something disturbs the Republic’s citizens, and from that day on nobody remembers the national anthem anymore. Does nobody know the difference between the Republic and Democracy? Why is voting important? Or even what the Republic actually is?

The Country falls into crisis. Debates are held on the national broadcaster. But not even in the Encyclopaedias sold by our Republicário [our “Republic-monger”] can the answers be found. It seems they are incomplete — they bring something strange that invades the public space and stuns the citizens of the Republic of I-Don’t-Know-How-Many.

Could it be his fault? The Republicário, with no answers, and to save face, sets off on a great adventure to try to save the Republic and its symbols, which have since been forgotten. Along the way, he even sets out to make a few corrections.
Can this Republic still be saved?

Guerra Junqueiro left us the motto for this performance: “There is more light in the 24 letters of the alphabet than in all the constellations of the firmament.”