Abstract

MACEDO, Ana Gabriela. The art of storytelling and the duty of the storyteller: Paula Rego and Martin McDonagh, a visual and literary dialogue. Faces de Eva. Estudos sobre a Mulher [online]. 2022, n.48, pp.29-47.  Epub Feb 20, 2023. ISSN 0874-6885.  https://doi.org/10.34619/awgm-owob.

Martin McDonagh’s play The Pillowman (2003) has directly influenced Paula Rego’s compositions that bear the same name (2004-05). I propose to look at the work of both artists in the light of a shared conviction: the belief that “the first duty of a storyteller is to tell a story”. There lies the right of the storyteller. And the freedom of the artist is to reject becoming a “legislator of mankind” and to elude censorship through strategies that involve the ambivalence of the absurd, as well as transgression. Rego claims that the overpowering presence of the world of instincts, the grotesque and the abject in her work, are “naturally” there, as something moving and palpitating at the heart of the very reality she depicts.

Keywords : storyteller; absurd; grotesque; transgression; censorship.

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