No Yogurt for the Dead

When Rodrigues’ father was in hospital, realising he was going to die, he was regularly visited by a woman called Teresa. She worked as a volunteer at the hospital and took the time to talk to patients to break through their loneliness. Later, Rodrigues discovered that Teresa was an actor, whom he knew well.

From his sickbed, his father started writing a book. According to Teresa, he wanted to mix his experiences as a terminal patient in hospital with memories of his life, in particular some stories about his work as a journalist. For instance, he thought of the story of another Teresa, Teresa Torga, an obscure actress and fado singer with mental health problems, who undressed and walked around naked, reciting poems and singing, in one of Lisbon’s busiest streets, during a demonstration.

After his father died, Rodrigues opened the notebook. It contained only a few lines and dots, a few scribbles, like the abstract drawings of a toddler.

In No Yogurt for the Dead, Rodrigues creates a theatre piece to imagine what his father might have wished to write in the final days of his life.