Writer/Director/Performer: Bruna Longo
Co-Director: Vitor Julian
As the bell tolled for midday, Brazilian actress Bruna Longa emerged from St Cuthbert’s Church to meet her audience in the graveyard. Edinburgh’s burial grounds are often busy places, full of visitors and ghost tours, but this was something unique and special: a theatrical deep dive into loss, grief and death.
In a prologue, Bruna explained that the show is about a character with her name, of the same age, who dies today; this gives her an opportunity to reflect on and respond creatively to her own death. We were led up to a grand room upstairs at the church, and Bruna proceeded to captivate her audience for almost an hour and a half, in a performance blending anthropology, mythology, music, physical theatre and dance. Her intensity as a performer is remarkable, drawing every audience member in as a witness to her emotional discoveries. We learn about the many and varied ways in which different cultures deal with death and funerary rites, and clearly Bruna feels that ritual fulfils a deep need even in modern secular society. Her performance becomes a ceremony in which she can acknowledge her inevitable death and invite us to contemplate our own mortality in a culture that prefers to keep death at arm’s length.
Bruna is undoubtedly a courageous artist, reflecting frankly on her own experience of loss and linking the personal to the universal. She embodies both strength and vulnerability here: a diminutive figure with great athleticism and a powerful singing voice. This show invites engagement on a deep emotional level, while feeling gently upheld by Bruna’s presence. The experience was bittersweet and uplifting, and it sent me back into the sunshine with plenty to think about, and a desire to emulate Bruna’s determination to meet her own death with curiosity and openness.
Part of the São Paulo Showcase 2026.
Runs until 27 August 2026 | Image: Danilo Apoena
