The bird of the stacked deaths – existence and political resistance in ‘A vala comum’, by José Mena Abrantes

Abstract

This article analyzes the play A vala comum (1994) by José Mena Abrantes, an Angolan playwright whose plays we can classify as political theatre. The play is part of a theatrical triptych produced in 1994 called O pássaro e a morte, with the purpose of discussing the violent effects of the struggle for power in the newly independent Angola. A vala comum is based on a historical episode, “Guerra dos três dias”, which took place in Luanda in October 1992, and which resulted in the murder of a significant number of opponents of the regime, including in the structure of the text, innocents. From the metaphor of a Dead Body that interacts with the other characters and the viewer through a voice off, a fantastic world is built, where there are no barriers between life and death, the real and the unreal, attributing historical meanings to those bodies that were murdered and stacked in mass graves.