The performing arts festival started in Brazil, with an eye on the environment and social tensions

With a strong social, racial, political, environmental and human rights imprint, the 6th edition of MIRADA – Ibero-American Festival of Performing Arts in Santos, Brazil, which ends on Sunday 18 September. The proposal is based on 36 multilingual shows in theater, dance, show and street theater, from thirteen countries.

This edition will be attended by representatives of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Spain, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Uruguay and Venezuela. Brazil will have artists from the states of Sergipe, Federal District, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Portugal will be the honored country.

the philosopher Djamila Ribeiro (Federal University of São Paulo) and Deputy Secretary of Human rights and citizenship issues in the municipal government St. Paul was commissioned to hold the opening lecture of the meeting at the Sesc Santos Theater this Saturday at noon on “decoloniality” and postcolonialism.

There he argued: “The decolonial process means to stop telling our story only from the point of view of pain, of the colonizer, as if our story had not begun before, in Africa and also in the period of slavery, as if we did not think of a series of emancipatory exits ”.

“The promotion of critical thinking and self-criticism with its training activities has always been a fundamental point of the Festival”, argue from the organization: during the ten days, there will be moments of dialogue, exchanges, workshops, performances, exhibitions, presentations of open books and meetings.

The director of Sesc São Paulo, Daniel Santos de Mirandaexplains: “Culture offers the opportunity to reduce borders and strengthen dialogues between different peoples. MIRADA was born in 2010 with the aim of presenting scenic experiences from Latin American countries, Spain and Portugal, fostering dialogue between creators and the public to encourage exchanges and reflections on common heritages and particular identities “.

A guide to what will take the stage

On stage, works will be seen that will address burning issues such as climate change and environmental consequences. The question of the Amazon will be present for example in Amazon Theaterconceived by the Spanish choreographer Laida Azkona Goni and the Chilean video artist Txalo Toloza-Fernández. There they draw an inventory of the violence in the Brazilian north from trips to the states of Amazonas and Pará.

It will also be The moon in the Amazons, directed by brothers Heidi Abderhalden and Rolf Abderhalden, of the group Map Theater, Bogotawhich tells a real event, that of the discovery in a territory of Colombia, in 2019, of indigenous communities living isolated by their own will.

and Vila Parisida Colectivo 302, da Cubatão, directed by Douglas Lima and led by Eliana Monteiro, from the Teatro da Vertigem, part of the memory and stories of those who lived in that popular district of São Paulo. Santista Baixada in 1980 (considered at the time the most polluted in the world). Like this bring on stage reflections on environmental and social aspects.

The Argentine representatives

For its part, our country will say present with To delete by Gustavo Tarrio, a parody to portray the dictatorship of ’76. Also with the woman I am, directed by Nelson Valente, a work that requires unconventional spaces for its development. Marina Otero will be on stage fuck mea reflection on the body of an artist.

The honored country, Portugal, has works that will deal with the always uncomfortable theme of conquest, the genocide of indigenous peoples and the colonization process with African slaves.

One of the most important theater groups in Brazil will share with the public the ongoing phase of his next work. rodeodel Teatro da Vertigem, will be released soon and there it aims to investigate the Brazilian rural environment, especially in the south-east and midwest, extending to the north, in the state of Rondònia.

During the Festival, the cycle Conversations: Intersections between works You will reflect on the influences on procedures in creative processes, in debates with the public.

There will be five rounds with different themes: “Edge Theater: Facing the Metropolis”; “How to be together?”; “Democratic actions on and off the stage”; “Your body as a space for research”; “The recreation / reinvention of social contexts in art”.

Parallel activities

In the workshops, artists and researchers from different sectors will present their work. The “transshipment practices” will be coordinated by the choreographers Marcella Levifrom Brazil, e Lucia Russo, from Argentina; “Disassembly Hamlet” will be an activity aimed at educators, led by the Peruvian director Chela De Ferrari, on her “free” version of Shakespeare’s work, with eight actors and actresses with Down syndrome on stage.

In “For a review [des]norteadora: suleando pensamentos “, Guilherme Diniz will propose to the participants the exercise of theatrical criticism as a political act.” Escavação: a hystórya por bayxo das unhas “, with Juão Nyn, will question the theater as we know it and will present theatrical events that already exist in Brazilian territory before the arrival of the Portuguese.

In all the activities and shows that make up this ambitious program we think about how each work dialogues and interacts with its environmentwith their receivers. They are provocative texts that try to disarm clichés and ways of relating, for example, to nature to create new forms of communication.

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