O Leão Velho: frontiers and borders of the colonial imaginary

Abstract

It is under the epigraph of Carlos Fuentes – “it takes several lives to make a single person” – that Lidia Jorge offers us this tale, as a fable, in a mise en scène of the colonial imaginary with all the imperialist resonances that follow it. On the stage, there are three men with a common desire to revive experiences once shared. The theme is simple with a linear plot: the slaughter of an old animal in African safari mode in Alentejo. What was supposed to be a quiet weekend becomes déjà vu of the times gone by in Mozambique with the lion coming from Sofala. Everything was designed, detailed, discussed, and judged for a priceless desire, since that is always the value of a will. In this representation of power and authority, a vis-à-vis between instinct and honor, a certain amount of loyalty is required, aligned with pseudo corrective behavior. What would presumably be the (pre)dominant side has given place to an inverted logic. “The problem of a man’s life is that above instinct he has honor. It is the duty of an animal to follow its instinct. The duty of man is to contradict [it],” would this be the didactic and moral message of the work? The deconstruction of this scenario implies a deeper reading of historical, political, and social roots, in an exercise in the analysis of identities with overlapping layers of memory and imagination. Lidia Jorge convenes a heritage shared by all, which still reverberates, displaying a thin, amusing, and subliminal irony. We should therefore question about the ending of this [fable-like] tale: “A shame. There were four of us, the same age. But only one of us behaved well. And it was him… him, the beast”.