THE GUMMY CANDY SELLER WHO TAUGHT ZECA TO THE KIDS

For decades, a candy vendor traveled to schools across the country on his bicycle, always loaded with sweets, worn-out records, and improbable stories. He was known everywhere; the sound of his horn held as much sway as the school bell. Yet, beyond clogging the arteries of several generations, his true passion was introducing children to the magic of the singer-songwriters of the April Revolution.
After their father’s death, Rita and Manel return to their childhood home to face the hardest thing to sort through: memories.
At the heart of the house sits that very bicycle, piled high with candy and records. There is also a turntable, American cookies, photographs, and albums. Revisiting their childhood, the siblings discover that their father—a humble candy vendor—left them far more than mere objects. He left them songs, stories, questions—and even more questions—along with freedom, critical thinking, and a way of viewing and facing the world.
As they recall the small details of daily life—the games, arguments, advice, and affection—the protest songs of José Afonso, Rita Olivaes, Sérgio Godinho, Ermelinda Duarte, José Mário Branco, Adriano Correia de Oliveira, and other singer-songwriters become a map of family memory and of a country they never experienced firsthand, yet came to know through their father’s stories.
Upon finding a box, Rita and Manel are led by a series of clues and messages that compel them to continue a conversation cut short by death. Beyond deciding what to do with his belongings, the siblings are confronted with a fundamental question: what do we do with everything we inherit that cannot fit inside a box?
Balancing humor and nostalgia, the play explores grief, memory, family, and freedom, as well as what remains when someone is gone. For there are things we sort, things we keep, and things that live on within us.