A little tiredness leads to mistakes being made. In the work we are doing, this means starting the scene or the song movements again.

We are following a written text, a new way of working for the actors from Palma.

Performances in the villages almost never last more than 20 minutes, the actors prepare them by memorising the lines and then trusting in improvisation. In Maputo, though, things are different, closer to our way of working, even Felix and Arlete write plot outlines, texts, dialogues.

Not all Palma actors can read in the same way. Some read slowly, at about primary school speed.

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As you have probably already understood, some problems are appearing and the day was very demanding.

At this moment in time the parts are being tried by everyone, in rotation, but we’ll soon have to assign the characters, and we have to consider lots of aspects: understanding the text, language, how well the people in the group act, move, how they communicate to the public.

A journalist visited us! And went away enthusiastic. In spite of everything, we’re all doing a great job. The group is talking about a theatre school at Palma, run by them.

We had a long chat on Skype with Emanuele of Slow Food, manager of Mozambique in the “10,000 gardens in Africa” project. Maybe they could create a school garden in Palma, Agostinho is a teacher, Adelino (senior) is head of the district service for Education, Young People and Technology, they would be the most suitable people to follow the gardens.