Monga

What lies between fear and laughter in this MONGA production in São Paulo in 2024? For now, what we can say about this first performance is that this production will not be another number from the 80s, nor a documentary theater about the many mongas of traditional circuses in Brazil (20th century) or about the past of Julia Pastrana (19th – 20th – 21st centuries). This production is the continuation of Jéssica Teixeira’s research, which began with her first solo «E.L. A» (2019), where her strange body became the raw material of his dramatic constructions and the main reason for the public’s estrangement from her plays. In «MONGA,» she takes the risk of avoiding the classics of history and proposes to revisit the harshness of the past without sensationalism, demolishing myths to construct other possible imaginaries based on Julia Pastrana’s story—and for herself. To achieve this, like Julia, the actress, as a way of evocation, proposes to dance, act and sing beautifully like the Mexican singer.