„Tupi or not to Tupi? that is the question“ or who eats who?

The idea of savage man-eaters has terrified Europeans in Brazil for centuries and was used as a pretext for oppression and displacement of the indigenous Tupi culture. The act of devouring the colonisers is also a metaphor for dealing with dominant cultural influences, a self-conscious incorporation of differences.

ABAPORU explores how the principle of anthropophagy offers a recipe for self-assertion in the face of the oppressions of a majority society. With four perfomers from four countries, oppression is exposed and deconstructed in a carnivalesque, orgiastic, non-elitist, ethnically mixed performance.