Design Myles Quin, Arena Ensemble, 2025;
Poster and photo book themes for upcoming performance
A Colónia is a characteristically radical and moving documentary-theatre work produced by Portugal's finest, Arena Ensemble. It is co-created with the children of political dissidents hunted down during Salazar’s fascist dictatorship. Now grown up, many of them struggle to reconcile this childhood of uncertainty, paranoia and hiding from the secret police with traditional ideas of family and parental love and care. A Colónia has at its core a clandestine children's holiday camp, set up in the early 1970s in order to give them some semblance of normality - and a chance to meet other children - in a childhood overshadowed by fear and haunted by the sacrifices of idealism.
