Ensign João Viegas was arrested and sent to fight in the Guinea War during the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal for protesting the regime through theater. Viegas was part of the direction of the Círculo de Iniciação Teatral da Academia de Coimbra (CITAC), an experimental theater group, during a time when the International Police and State Defense (PIDE) had no qualms about censoring anyone who tried to oppose Salazar's regime. After his arrest, the PIDE banned the CITAC. The group only resumed operations after the Carnation Revolution. Decades later, Viegas returned to CITAC to reveal stories of the war and show how PIDE operated. In this re-encounter with History, which the short film “Caixa Preta” reveals, we discover Viegas’ motivations and thinking.

Ensign João Viegas was arrested and sent to fight in the Guinea War during the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal for protesting the regime through theater. Viegas was part of the direction of the Círculo de Iniciação Teatral da Academia de Coimbra (CITAC), an experimental theater group, during a time when the International Police and State Defense (PIDE) had no qualms about censoring anyone who tried to oppose Salazar's regime. After his arrest, the PIDE banned the CITAC. The group only resumed operations after the Carnation Revolution. Decades later, Viegas returned to CITAC to reveal stories of the war and show how PIDE operated. In this re-encounter with History, which the short film “Caixa Preta” reveals, we discover Viegas’ motivations and thinking.

Estado de Excepção is a documentary about CITAC (Coimbra Theater Initiation Circle), a university theater group, revealing history since it was constituted in 1956 until the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. It is the history of the theater group university and, through it, the history of theater in Portugal, revealing two remarkable decades of the History of Portugal. Through the Academy of Coimbra, the documentary reproduces student life, the position of women in society, and the change in mentalities of being and being in the world. It reproduces the existing censorship and the fight against the dictatorship, the resistance to an exhausted regime, as well as the emerging contradictions of the democratic revolution. CITAC has a heritage of 50 years of experience in Coimbra. It carries with it the possibility of the theatrical and civic formation of thinking bodies, constituting a proper ball of a possible model, generation by generation, between studies, theater, and social drama.