PT | EN

What does it mean to be a citizen? To belong to a place and only in that place have the right to exercise one’s citizenship? Where is “my” place? And “your” place, where is that? Who has the power to define where someone’s place is?  Is it possible to locate the beginning of any story?

Keli Freitas is a Brazilian artist living in Portugal. In Go Back To Where You Came From, she searches for traces of her Portuguese great-grandmother while retracing her own journey as an immigrant.

In this autobiographical piece, she shares the stage with Gigi – who welcomed her on the first day she arrived in Portugal, and who would go on to become one of her best friends. By trying to reconstruct their genealogies, Keli and Gigi write their own present-day story.

Go Back To Where You Came From is the second play in Keli Freitas’s biographical trilogy, which began in 2020 with Add a missing Place and marks Gigi’s debut as an actress in theater at the age of 77.

© Elisa Freitas
© Elisa Freitas
© Elisa Freitas
© Elisa Freitas

Credits

Written and Directed by
Keli Freitas

Performed by
Ana Gigi and Keli Freitas

Creative advisors
Atena Barbosa, Mariana Ricardo

Set and Costumes
Elsa Romero & Manu Curtiss

Light Design and operator
Ariene Godoy

Sound Operator
Isaac Veloso

Executive producer
Maria Tsukamoto

Produced By
Trypas Corassão AC

Coproduction residency
Teatro Viriato, O Espaço do Tempo, A Oficina

Coproduction
O Espaço do Tempo, A Oficina e Cineteatro Louletano, as part of Projeto Casa

Keli Freitas

Keli Freitas (1983, Brazil) is a playwright, director, and actress. She holds a degree in Performing Arts from CAL (Casa das Artes de Laranjeiras – RJ), a Bachelor's in Literature from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), and a Master's in Portuguese Studies from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at the Nova University of Lisbon.

Researcher and collector of letters and diaries from anonymous people, she has been dedicated since 2013 to creating artistic projects based on what she calls "everyday ordinary writings," such as the Projeto Carimbaria. She's created pieces such as Madrinhas de Guerra (2024, TNDMII); Volta para a Tua Terra (2024, CASA); Outra Língua (2022, TNDMII); Adicionar um Lugar Ausente (2020, São Luiz); Osmarina Pernambuco não Consegue Esquecer (2019, TNDMII). She is the author of 10 other plays, all performed between 2012 and the present, in Brazil and Portugal. She collaborates with various artists and collectives, notably her work in the dramaturgy of Baque, co-written with Gaya de Medeiros, and Es tr3s irms, co-written with Tita Maravilha.