Elaine Ávila’s Fado: The Saddest Music in the World returns to the Vancouver stage
Part musical, part theatre piece, Fado explores identity through the hauntingly moving music of Portugal
Fado: The Saddest Music in the World. Photo by Derek Ford
Firehall Arts Centre and Puente Theatre present Fado—The Saddest Music in the World from January 14 to February 5 at the Firehall Arts Centre; opening night is January 18, and post-show talkbacks take place January 19 and 26 and February 2
FAMED CONTEMPORARY FADO singer Mariza has been quoted as saying that the melancholic musical style of Portugal offers a way for people to “clean” their soul. In other words, to immerse yourself in the genre’s deeply expressive woe is to come out the other side in a better place. In this sense, the remount of Portuguese-Canadian playwright Elaine Ávila’s play Fado: The Saddest Music in the World at the Firehall Arts Centre in a coproduction with Puente Theatre—coming now, following COVID-era lockdowns and social isolation—could not be more timely.
Part concert, part theatre piece, the play is set in old Lisbon’s brothels and back alleys. The work follows the story of a young woman who discovers her own identity—and the fascist past of the country to which she traces her roots—through fado. Taking its name from the Portuguese word for “fate”, fado is marked by longing and lament. The style grew out of the 19th century, with slaves and seafarers singing of life’s hardships and using song as a way to spread news.
The hit of the 2018 Victoria Fringe, winning the award for Favourite Musical, Fado played to capacity crowds in 2019 in Vancouver at the Firehall Arts Centre and went on to earn several other honours. There were big plans to follow: the play was to invited to tour across Canada and the U.S. Then, you know…
Now that the world has reached a certain level of normalcy, Ávila says she’s beyond thrilled about Fado’s return to the stage. It was a conversation with Firehall Arts Centre artistic producer Donna Spencer that helped the playwright realize just how resonant Fado may be at this particular time and place.
“For a lot of people, this was the last show they saw before the lockdowns,” Ávila says in a phone interview with Stir. “I was so honoured that the work spoke to so many people. A lot of people experience it as a trip to Portugal.
“I was surprised to find out that in the first production, sometimes people came together and were crying—and sometimes people do that at a fado concert,” she adds. “Donna thought that people, particularly right now, might want to come together and cry; we haven’t really done that [post-pandemic]. We kind of pretended we got over it and just got on with things. I’ve noticed that I am so excited—maybe even more excited about any production, ever, because I’m so excited to be going out and meeting people because of the play. It feels really special.”
Directed by Puente Theatre artistic director Mercedes Bátiz-Benét, Fado features performances by Natércia Napoleão, Lucia Frangione, Judd Palmer, Pedro M. Siqueira, Chris Perrins, and Dan Weisenburger. Sara Marreiros, who grew up between Sagres, Portugal, and Victoria, B.C., plays the ghost of Amália Rodrigues, who was known as the Queen of Fado and who helped popularize the form worldwide.
Elaine Ávila.
Researching and writing Fado was very much a journey into the heart Portugal for Ávila. Although she was born in the U.S., her grandparents hail from Portugal’s Azores region. She was inspired to delve more deeply into her heritage after working with Inuk storyteller Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak on a play in which he was drawing from stories that his grandmother had told him. Through that experience, she found herself yearning for more in-depth information about her own cultural background.
She recalls hearing fado around her grandparents during her childhood and to this day feels a profound connection to the music.
“Studies have shown that some of the music you hear when you’re young affects you really deeply in life,” Ávila says. “My grandparents didn’t sing fado in front of me; I rescued their old guitars from their basement after they died and dusted them off. I don’t know why, but maybe through immigration they lost the time to play music. I asked my grandfather if he would teach me a Portuguese song, and he told me he sang fado at the Portuguese Hall in San Diego before Amália Rodrigues did. He was very humble. I never knew that about him until asking him before he died. So my connection to it is very nostalgic.”
In addition to exploring immigration and identity, the play also confronts the unpleasant reality of the meaning of some of fado’s songs. Though they may sound upbeat to non-Portuguese speakers, there are certain numbers that echo fascist principles—another element that makes the piece especially apt currently, with Donald Trump continuing to lurk in the background of global politics.
Ávila, who has served as playwright-in-residence at Pomona College in Los Angeles, Quest University Canada in Squamish, and Western Washington University, also held a three-year residency with Playwrights Theatre Centre to write Portuguese plays. She has had works produced across Central America, Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia and was distinguished as a descendentes notáveis (notable descendant) for her theatre work by the Government of the Azores, Portugal. The founder of the Arts Club Theatre’s LEAP Playwriting Program, Ávila was the 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the University of the Azores and teaches creative writing at Douglas College. While live performances of Fado came to a screeching halt due to the pandemic, the work found new life via a 2021 publication by Talonbooks. (Ávila has changed the script ever so slightly in certain places for its upcoming run.)
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