Out at Sea (1997–2006) anticipates a characteristic that would become recurrent in the trajectory of the Guimarães Brothers: processes originating in academic contexts that move beyond the classroom and acquire the status of professional productions.

Sławomir Mrożek’s text, written in 1961, presents a closed dramatic structure. Three castaways, lost at sea, hungry and thirsty, are forced to decide which of them will serve as food for the other two. The narrative unfolds through a succession of absurd events—a hallmark of Mrożek’s humor—ranging from the holding of secret-ballot elections to the arrival of unlikely characters aboard the drifting boat.

The existential dimension of the conflict is intensified by the contrast between human fragility and the vastness of the sea, as well as by the impossibility of redemption within this condition of abandonment. Questions of autonomy and free will are brought into tension—especially with the ironic entrance of characters coming from the continent—drawing the work closer to the Beckettian universe, in which human beings are not necessarily masters of themselves.

Language plays a central role: it is through logic and argumentation that the conflict develops. The directors created two professional stagings of the work, in 1997 and 2006, each guided by distinct investigations into the theatricality of Mrożek’s text.

In the 1997 production, Adriano and Fernando expand the existential scale of the sea through a wall of television monitors displaying images of the sky. The device functions simultaneously as spatial and geographic reference, while also signaling an emerging interest in dialogue with non-theatrical technologies. The restriction of movement—a recurring concern in the directors’ research—is already present in the very choice of the text, whose dramatic situation unfolds within a confined space.

In this version, the sea assumes both metaphorical quality and visual function through the use of aquariums containing live fish. The condition of the fish in the tank mirrors that of the characters in the boat—or, on a broader scale, that of human beings in the world.

In the 2006 remounting, the directors intensify the comic dimension of the text and invest in a more formal style of performance, as if the characters did not fully perceive themselves as characters, but rather as subjects inserted into an overtly constructed—theatrical situation.

The wall of televisions reappears, transformed into a large upstage screen projecting skies and birds. Within the scenic “ocean,” three submerged television sets broadcast real underwater footage—fish, corals, marine creatures. The absurdity of these visual elements reinforces the dramaturgical absurd and heightens its metaphorical dimension.

This strategy extends into the sonic environment: Yellow Submarine by the Beatles plays in multiple languages and arrangements as the audience enters the theater. The interest in the submarine—that which exists yet remains unseen under ordinary conditions—echoes the directors’ recurring fascination with what is suggested, unspoken, and lacunar.

The representation of the sea once again assumes a connotative character, while also taking on a narrative function: a vast undulating, volumetric, three-dimensional carpet—deep green and plastically luminous, composed of micro-particles—covers the entire stage. Wet clothes become, symbolically, clothes impregnated with sea.