Saudades
2025 Fay Chandler Creativity Grant
An immersive tropicália-inspired memory house
About
Saudades is a multi-media play and a tropicália-inspired “memory house” that invites the MIT community to move through a series of theatrical prompts encouraging a calling up of the axé (spirit /energy) of loved people, places, and experiences which, while physically absent, we carry very present with us.
Created and directed by Blythe de Oliveira Foster, the piece was born from an impulse to create an “alternative” memorial celebrating the life of the artist’s grandmother, Iracy Gondim de Oliveira, and her creative experiments with a host of Brazilian/American identities.
Saudades offers a dramatic space for bossa nova and forró, where theater of the absurd messes with nostalgic family gatherings. Attendees find themselves in a church basement / electronics store / nail salon / at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean / inside a TV / in the place where a little girl in 1930s Brazil meets herself as a 1980s secretary wearing white pumps in America do Norte. A community work, the production incorporates memories and reflections from MIT students and community members and creative contributions from local artists.
Schedule
Saudades
Saturday, July 12, 2025 / 2:00–5:00pm
MIT Theater Building W97 Lobby
345 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA
Collaborators
Blythe de Oliveira Foster, Director of Performance Program, and Lecturer in Theater Arts, values collaborations and creative conversations which bridge performance and community engagement. Her theater practice includes acting and directing projects, in which she plays with the physical embodiment of memory, imagination, and language.
Biography: MTA
Website: blythefoster.com
Credits
Creative Team
Concept & Direction – Blythe de Oliveira Foster
Collage Art & Co-Scenic Design – Crystal Vielula
Co-Scenic Design & Technical Direction – Joseph Lark-Riley
Lighting Design & Multi-media Engineering – Kevin Fulton
Video Design – Emi Grady-Willis
Production Management – Maggie Moore
Interactive Engineering & Website Design – Ya’akov Zerykier
Community Engagement – Jeff Goldenson
Musicians – Receita de Samba, Thiago Wolf & friends
Senior Administrative Assistant, Music & Theater Arts – Yi Tu
Director of Communications, Music & Theater Arts – Dan Pecci
Associate Head, Music & Theater Arts – Josh Higgason
Head, Music & Theater Arts – Jay Scheib