FONOLITO: A pedra do SOM

FONOLITO: A pedra do SOM is a theatre project conceived and directed by Lucas França that investigates processes of monumentalisation, touristification and transformation in Lisbon’s urban space. The work begins from the idea that monuments are not neutral structures: they select events, construct versions of history and participate both in the production of collective memory and in its erasures.

The Portuguese subtitle A pedra do SOM means “the stone of SOUND”. The title emerges from the image of a stone capable of retaining and giving back sounds. In FONOLITO, the monument is imagined as a body that accumulates voices, noises, conflicts, silences and experiences. From this image, the project seeks to make audible narratives and presences that find no visible inscription within the city’s official representations.

ABOUT THE PROCESS

FONOLITO develops through direct observation and lived experience of the city. The process combines urban dérives through different areas of Lisbon, performative actions in public space, and the gathering of written, visual and sonic materials. These experiences do not function as research separate from the work itself, but as part of the creative process: movements through the city, encounters and actions generate materials that feed into the dramaturgy.

The performances are conceived as autonomous events and, at the same time, as laboratories for writing. The dramaturgy is constructed from the materials generated through these encounters with the city and is subsequently tested through staged readings. The project thus establishes a movement between territory, action and writing, treating urban space as an active material of creation.

CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT

CONTINUITY OF THE RESEARCH

FONOLITO continues an investigation into Lisbon’s urban space that began with Palimpsesto: O que se apaga para escrever de novo? (2024). While the first work approached the erasures produced by processes of urban transformation and gentrification, FONOLITO shifts the research towards monuments, mass tourism and the ways in which the city organises what can be remembered, seen and heard.

The relationship between the two works does not lie in the repetition of a theatrical form, but in an understanding of the city as an active material of creation. In FONOLITO, this investigation moves through monuments and the spaces surrounding them, observing the tensions between memory, representation, everyday use and tourist consumption.

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