Written in 1958, during an era of “prosperity”, The Zoo Story is an attack on the so-called ‘American dream’. Edward Albee has us watch an apparently fortuitous meeting between two men in New York’s Central Park. Each of them represents an ‘America’. One represents normative America: he is a quiet family man, with a wife, two daughters and pets (with some irony in relation to the world of literature, Albee gives him a job as an executive in a publishing house). The other represents the invisible America: he is a wandering man; his description of the building where he lives seems to literally represent the social margin to which he belongs and, at the same time, metaphorically his troubled spirit. The play is a political denunciation, and invites a type of representation that is both realistic (the characters behave according to the social class to which they belong) and emotional (the characters both enter states of intense disturbance) – which is why we invited João Mota to direct it. As the play traces the social geography of New York City, referencing its various zones according to the social classes that inhabit them, the set also highlighted the territoriality of the stage and extended to the spaces travelled by the audience into the room: all the dimensions were made clear with ribbons and numbers glued to the floor. In view of the financial scarcity with which this project was realised, the posters were leftover stock provided by a wrapping paper factory, on which labels were stuck with the information.