One can only understand the heart if one does know how to listen to it.

When two dolls come to life, outside of Man's gaze (or the bonecraft that manipulates them on stage), there is room for poetry and for the discovery of the heart ...

Written in 1919 by Almada Negreiros - an odd figure of 20th-century Portuguese modernism - Antes de Começar portrays the moment immediately before the two puppets come up to the stage, discovering a new life outside the manipulation of man, human beings such as friendship, the will of discovery and knowledge, play and affection ...