Luiz Francisco Rebello, born in Lisbon on 10 September 1924, was the author of a body of work that was crucial to the Portuguese theatre landscape of the 20th century, including genres as diverse as playwrighting, translation, reviews, research or historiography. In May 1971, he was asked by the Lisbon City Council to form a Municipal Theatre Company, based in the recently-purchased Teatro São Luiz, of which he also became the director. After the conflicts that emerged with the Censorship Committee regarding his proposed artistic programme, and which would culminate in the banning of a performance of the play The Mother, by Stanislaw Witkiewicz, days before the opening of the version directed by Artur Ramos, Luiz Francisco Rebello offered his resignation in March 1972: “Teatro São Luiz became Teatro Without Luiz”, could be heard in a vaudeville show (as he tells us in his autobiography O Passado na Minha Frente).
To celebrate the centenary of his birth, the director of Teatro São Luiz invites a group of performers and artists to put together a tribute event, including the reading of two of the author’s texts: Cronologia dos Acontecimentos, about the censorship and banning process of the show The Mother (published in the volume A Mãe e o Processo do espectáculo anulado); and the play O Mundo Começou às 5 e 47, written in 1946 and which opened in Teatro-Estúdio do Salitre the following year.
