Testimony

— Ricardo Pais

Theatre Director

It’s important to highlight the constant sense of construction that Nuno Lacerda uses in his works, in his projects, in his life: he knows very well the subject itself, what he draws knows how it will be built – and the many years that he registers as a professor of this and other disciplines at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto prove it. This fact is differentiating, even more so from the perspective of the scenographer, when we imagine, for example, the apparently unstable balance of a brutal 9m high wall like that of the Great Theatre of the World, clearly Nuno Lacerda’s reference scenography.

In Italy, when something is broadcast that is being seen live, it is said to occur in contemporary. This comes to mind in relation to Nuno, because the sensuality that characterises him and with which he works, for example, drawings by raised hand, which should be very austere things – and are indeed so – at the same time as the hand slides almost compulsively on the sheet of paper, has a lot to do with his very close attention to everything around him and happening in the moment, “with time”, as a consequence of time. And that is being contemporary, before and after any enrolment in any School, in any Aesthetics, in any Knowledge, in any Philosophy. That is to be alive while we are virtualizing.

Excerpt from an interview conducted in 2020