International artists collective MEXA talk latest theatre piece ‘The Last Supper’: “We wanted to create a public archive of these queer lives that wouldn’t be told if we didn’t tell them ourselves”

Inspired by the iconic Da Vinci painting, the Brazil-based theatre group presents this new experimental piece, where audiences are invited to dine alongside the performers while delving into their personal experiences. Guillermo Nazara chats with the troupe to learn more about the development of this one-of-a-kind show and what makes it such a dish.

How did the idea for the show come about?

The idea first arrived to us a long time ago. We wanted to talk about the main topics that surround the creation and existence of MEXA, and we found out that food and the idea of farewell is something that is always hunting us. We had this joke that, in the beginning of the group, the only way to guarantee a meeting or rehearsal was to offer food, otherwise people wouldn’t come! 

The show is themed after the creatives and performers’ farewells in real life. Should audiences expect a heartbreaking piece or an uplifting one?

Initially, the play wasn’t a cheerful one because a lot of people were leaving the group — we always faced this ghost of not being able to continue as a theatre group. The question was, how can we keep working together as a group in this vulnerable situation? We decided to talk about farewell and food, and we realised that a lot of people in the group had a personal history with Da Vinci’s painting. We decided to re-enact this painting in our own way to create our own farewell and final image. By doing this, we understood that it wouldn’t be a sad story — we would like to leave a final image that is a happy and cheerful one.

What kind of goodbyes will the show explore? Just the ones everyone faces in life or perhaps also those that society imposes when ostracising LGBT people?

This is a farewell for a lot of queer people from the group. By speaking about this specific group, we wanted to leave a question for every audience – what kind of image would you like to leave, if you had to tell your own story? We are doing this play to talk about our own story, but we wanted to make it broader than that.

What’s the reason behind theming it after the concept of dinner?

The play has two parts: the first part talks about the idea of final images and Da Vinci’s painting in a kind of lecture format. It’s also important for us as a group to create a real experience, so we wanted a real dinner to happen in the second part. We want to tell our autobiographies, but also to invent. In order to make fiction, we have to give real material, so it wouldn’t be possible to talk about this experience without having a last supper, every night, that could be shared with the whole audience.

What particular creative challenges have you found in the development of this piece?

When you work with real food, it’s always a challenge — but also this idea of creating two different atmospheres for the audience. The first part is very theatrical and very distant, which isn’t usually something we do as a group, and then the second part is much more about the presence and performative aspect of it – that was a challenge, especially in another language with subtitles. The idea of getting to a final image is different for everyone in the group, too, so the play has a lot of different endings.

Are there any highlights in this production that you’d like to flag?

It would be too much of a spoiler to say!

How would you summarise the message of the piece?

We’ve been doing this piece for the last year and a half, and when we started, we truly believed that the group might end, so it wasn’t totally fiction, but it was really about how we try and talk about real things by making fiction. By doing it, we use the theatre as a space to avoid things. We also wanted to make a final image to create a public archive of these queer lives that wouldn’t be told if we didn’t tell them ourselves. 

We have been doing the play for this long, in so many countries and amazing spaces, and now the idea of ending the group is much more distant. We actually didn’t want to end the group, and this play was a way of working through the trauma of being left and forgotten.

Why come see ‘The Last Supper’?

When you come to see the play, you are witnesses to our history and your own history, and you are allowed to participate in it. It’s a chance to participate in this collective story that happens every night and will never be repeated — it’s never the same audience. We remember all our audiences and all the tables that have sat with us.

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By Guillermo Nazara