RITE OF TRANSITION 2025

Since 2023, I’ve used the name Ritó. I have a daughter called Penelope who will be 10 in April 2025. Penélope lived with me as her mother (and as a wife) until she was five, and now she’s experiencing non-binary parenting with me. Together, we talked a lot about bodies, about gender, about ideas made and not made, and also about what it would be like to create a piece that could bring together two apparently disconnected ideas: the world of gender transition and a world in ecological transition. In other words, diving into an ocean of plastic while waiting for a mastectomy to be performed.”
(Ritó Natálio)

 

ritó criança imagempromo

 

‘Rite of Transition’ is an autobiographical play dedicated to the processes of bodily, hormonal, social and ecological transition. As a scientific experiment open to the public, it is also an ode to queer parenthood and childhood, playing with the language that is transmitted and that passes between the mouths of adults and the mouths of children (and vice versa). Ritó will construct a political fable about bodies, families and worlds that seem to be disappearing even from the language of children.

How can we talk about a whole range of species and voices that have disappeared from the world? How can we talk about what is changing and moving faster and faster? And what about new ‘soft robotics’ or liquid nano-interfaces that have rapidly changed the landscape of science and ecology, and are not always accessible in new metaphors for understanding the world? For example, TestoGel, applied to R.’s arm every night? Or the pollution of water with oestrogen, which has caused cases of precocious puberty?

‘Rite of Transition’ will also be a shared rite of transition, which experiments with an intergenerational language and an interstitial perspective between the arts and sciences.

This creation concludes the research process that Ritó Natálio carried out over three years as part of the STAGES project (Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift), co-funded by the European Union and of which the D. Maria II National Theatre is a partner.

www.tndm.pt/pt/programacao/espetaculos/rito-de-transicao/

⌂ TECHNICAL INFO

Text and direction: Ritó Natálio
In the context of: STAGES project
Dramaturgy: Ritó Natálio
Performance and collaborations: Alina Ruiz Folini, Penélope Levi Natálio, Ritó Natálio, Jonas Van
Visual arts: Jonas Van
Research support: Ce Quimera, Dénise Médico, Miguel Saraiva
Production and creation assistance: Laila Algaves Nuñez
Executive production: Associação Parasita
Coproduction: Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Associação Parasita
Support: PARASITA is a structure funded by the Portuguese Republic - Ministry of Culture/Directorate-General for the Arts for the 2025-2026 biennium.

2025


15.02
Ritó Natálio, Jonas Van, Ce Quimera, Miguel Saraiva, Alina Ruiz Folini
CORPO-T / CORPO-TERRA — public sharing, OpenLAB / Musiberia, Serpa