In Tiago Rodrigues’ No Yogurt for the Dead, the playwright, director, and artistic director of the Festival d’Avignon begins from a true and deeply personal story: that of his father, Rogério Rodrigues, a respected Portuguese journalist. In the final days of his life in hospital, Rogério began writing an article, noting down each day his experience as a terminal patient in a notebook. They both knew it would be his last text. After his death, Tiago opened the notebook and found only a few lines, dots, uncertain marks, almost childlike scribbles.
From that void emerges No Yogurt for the Dead: the desire to imagine the pages never written and to give voice to what remained suspended. Blending memories, fragments of writing, songs, Portuguese musical tradition, and intimate confessions, Rodrigues constructs a performance that attempts a small gesture of resistance against the end.
Each scene becomes a delicate and ironic variation on the theme of farewell. The stage turns into a surreal landscape, where beds slide across an icy sea and fado becomes a deep echo, collective memory, and a song of longing.
Tiago Rodrigues (1977) began his career as an actor about 25 years ago. Meeting tg STAN, while he was still a theater student, had a powerful impact on him. The freedom he discovered while working for the first time with this Belgian collective would decisively influence his subsequent work. In 2003, he co-founded the company Mundo Perfeito with Magda Bizarro, with which he created and presented around 30 shows in over 20 countries, becoming a regular presence at festivals and venues such as the Festival d’Automne, the METEOR Festival in Norway, Theaterformen in Germany, the Festival TransAmériques in Canada, and the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, among others.
Rodrigues has collaborated with numerous Portuguese and international theater artists, as well as choreographers and dancers. He has also taught theater at various schools. Parallel to his stage work, he has written screenplays for film and television, newspaper articles, poetry, and essays. From 2015 to 2021, he served as the artistic director of the Dona Maria II National Theatre in Lisbon.
Rodrigues has gained widespread international recognition and numerous national and international awards. Among his most significant works are By Heart, The Way She Dies, Sopro, Dans la mesure de l’impossible, Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, and, most recently, Hécube, pas Hécube, which premiered at the 2024 Festival d’Avignon—a festival he has directed since September 2022. Whether blending true stories and fiction, rewriting classics, or adapting novels, Tiago Rodrigues’ theater is deeply rooted in the idea of writing for and with the actors, seeking a poetic transformation of reality through the tools of the stage.
text and direction Tiago Rodrigues
cast Lisah Adeaga, Manuela Azevedo, Beatriz Brás, Hélder Gonçalves
dramaturgy Kaatje De Geest
assistant director André Pato
light design Dennis Diels
scenography Sammy Van den Heuvel
costumi Ilse Vandenbussche
sound design Frederik Vanslembrouck
music Hélder Gonçalves
dutch translation Lut Caenen
Production NTGent
Co-production Culturgest Lisboa, Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa, Wiener Festwochen
