A show created by the Beira Aguieira Association to Support the Visually Impaired, an organization that supports the Mortágua guide-dog school, takes to the stage of ACERT, Tondela, on Saturday to mark the Day of the Person with Disabilities.
The director of the Escola Cães Guias de Mortágua told today that they sell the ‘Vi (r) viewers without seeing’ in order to make people aware of what it’s like to be blind.
“We put people in the room blindfolded, we explain what is going to happen and we ask them to keep sales until the show ends, although we know that there are people who take it because they do not feel very well,” Ana Filipa Paiva explained.
At the base of ‘Vi (R) see without seeing’ is the goal of “sensitizing people to what it is not to see” and on the day of the debut “people were very moved, with the way of being in the audience, because watching blindfolded to a show has nothing to do with the image, which is completely different, especially for those who see, “she said.
On the night of the premiere, an inquiry was made and people said that “the music enters in a totally different way and they realize sounds and things that they have no notion when they go to see a spectacle”.
“We’ve had people who have been watching the sales and the reaction of the people is surprising for the positive and then there are also people who at one point feel dizzy or disgusted and have to take the sale, but they put it back,” said.
Ana Filipa Paiva told that the stage itself is made “in a special way, to be as unattractive as possible, it is the least visible possible so that anyone who takes the sales is not attracted” by the show.
“They make a projection of lights that slaps the scene a little, it makes us chained and does not allow us to see what is on stage,” explained the director, who says that the group consists of 14 musicians distributed by various wind instruments, keys and chords and three voices.
In common is the maestro, Ricardo Vicente, who was challenged by the school of guide dogs to create a group “solely for this show” and “are all volunteers, because they all have their work.”
“They are all musicians from Mortágua who have been able to raise awareness for this cause and who, in one way or another, are linked to the school,” said the technical director, who explained that the repertoire is “very varied” but with a thread.
“We have songs of the most variable range, all with this thread, the lack of vision of who sang them, or wrote them, as is the case of Andrea Bocelli, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles or the DAMA, because the song in question this band was written by a blind person, “he said.
