Cock Crowing | Parla-Solos

If the Barcelos Rooster, Portugal’s most popular *souvenir*, could speak, what story would it tell? That was the question American playwright, screenwriter and actor Robert Schenkkan, winner of awards such as the Pulitzer and the Tony, asked himself following an artistic residency at mala voadora in 2022. In response, he wrote the monologue *Cantar de Galo* (*Old Cock*) and offered it to Jorge Andrade, who performs and stages it. In his soliloquy, the Rooster tells how it saved a man unjustly accused from the gallows, only to end up turned into a symbol of the visual culture of the Estado Novo, of questionable decorativeness. At a certain point, it comes to blows, in argument, with Salazar, the inventor of the nationalist fiction of which it is itself one of the illustrative figures. It crushes the dictator with its arguments, reclaiming its vocation as protector of the freedom of the innocent.