Na Ruinas (in de Ruïnes)
A son looks back on his father’s life – from famine in Cape Verde to an existence in Rotterdam, from young soldier to man between two worlds. Through traditional Cape Verdean music and hip-hop, Gery Mendes explores what words cannot express: love, loss, and the baggage that generations carry.
In Na Ruinas (In the ruins), a son tries to understand what shaped his father and how that continues to affect life at home. From a dilapidated dream house, he sees how his father experienced war, how silence lingers afterwards, and how love exists but does not always show itself. With two musicians by his side, Gery Mendes crawls into different facets of his father – from young and hopeful to damaged and scarred.
This is an intense, personal, and cinematic theatrical concert about identity, family, and a past that continues to have an effect. It is an ode to fathers and sons and to the traces that a history leaves through a family, long after the violence has stopped.
About Gery Mendes & AllthingsAfrica
Gery Mendes is a Rotterdam-based multidisciplinary creator, MC, poet, and singer-songwriter. With the project AllthingsAfrica, he brings stories of Africa and its diaspora to life on stage in his own unique way. His work explores what it means to come from two worlds and how personal and collective memories are processed through art.
Na Ruinas is made possible in part by Fonds Podiumkunsten, Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, Cultuurfonds, and the Erasmus Stichting. With thanks to Orkater.
