Review: By Heart, Battersea Arts Centre

Ten chairs sit empty on the stage as the audience enter the Battersea Arts Centre’s Grand Hall. It’s a simple set up for a simple premise: with the guidance of Portuguese performer Tiago Rodrigues, tonight ten members of the audience will learn one of Shakespeare’s sonnets off by heart.

When was the last time you had to remember something that wasn’t a PIN number or a password? The very act seems radical in today’s world. For Rodrigues, the prompt was his grandmother’s loss of eyesight. A voracious reader, she asked him to choose a final book for her, which instead of merely reading she would memorise. He selected a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Still this seems a fairly straightforward idea for a performance: what it actually produces is a deeply political, unifying human act.

As the audience rush to claim the few available seats on stage to learn Sonnet 30, they look confident of success. They’re of different ages, genders and cultures: a global mix. Shakespeare, however, is not always familiar in its terminology and it takes a number of attempts to grasp the first few lines. But grasp them they do.

Who would have thought such a simple idea could be so richly collaborative, creative, and uplifting? As the participants stumble across their words, there’s a moving sense of vulnerability and they look to each other for support, which is given generously and willingly. There’s a frisson in the room as the audience will them to get the words right, and we are all connected in the space created by the act of remembering. Shakespeare’s English becomes a Rosetta Stone, spoken by people of diverse nationalities to aid understanding. They hold in their hands books that have names significant to the story and to history written boldly across, embedded within them for all to see – not forgotten.

Rodrigues is a supremely amiable host, who is gentle but firm with his guinea pigs, and cheekily teases audience members stepping out to the bathroom. Between reciting the lines and testing the participants, he supplies fascinating anecdotes connected to the process, and tells us of his admiration for George Steiner, which prompted his own obsessive memorising. We learn about banned poet Boris Pasternak’s wife, who saved his poems by teaching them to ten people at a time. They locked them in their brains, preserving knowledge of them, meaning the Soviets who sought to silence him failed to do so. We realise that the people on stage are linked to those ten who went before, taking their seats. And we learn that if you memorise something, the bastards can’t take it away from you, celebrating Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451. This is a call to arms in today’s political climate from across decades past, which fits beautifully with Rodrigues’ belief that poems have no end. The memorising of books is a revolutionary act, just as burning of them is.

The story of Rodrigues’ grandma is a poignant one, yet triumphant as she remembers a sonnet even as recognition of her family fades. It is consumed, ingested and gives nourishment, just as it does here in Battersea. It feels like a privilege to be in this room tonight, raised up by shared human interaction, and empowered by knowledge. This is an experience the audience is asked to take away with them, hopefully spreading the word. And it’s one we will surely never forget.

Written, Directed and Performed by Tiago Rodrigues
English translation by Tiago Rodrigues, revised by Joana Frazão
Scenography, Costumes and Props by Magda Bizarro

This UK performance is now finished but By Heart continues on an international tour.