JUNE 16-26
2011
The Living by Jacinto Lucas Pires | Composer: Chopin | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara Bento | Scenography: Rui Francisco/
João Brites | Opening: Citemor, Montemor-o-Velho | 19-07-2007 | Photography: Nuno Patinho
On the Other Side
Portuguese Official Representation at the 12th Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space
16 > 26_June_2011
Prague, Czech Republic
Curator and designer: João Brites
Organisation and Production: Directorate General for the Arts / Portuguese Ministry of Culture
Opening: 16 June 2011
Czech National Gallery – Veletrzni Palace, Grand Hall, lot 2A, Prague
Presentation in Lisbon / Press Conference
22 February 2011 | 11:30 a.m.
Foz Palace | Hall of Mirrors
Presentation in Prague
16 June 2011
Czech National Gallery – Veletrzni Palace, Grand Hall, lot 2A, Prague
Organisation and Production:
Sponsor:
JUNE 16-26
2011
Happy People with Tears, by João de Melo | Composer: Jorge Salgueiro | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara Bento
Scenographer: Joana Simões | Opening: Teatro O Bando, Palmela | 13-12-2002 | Photograph: Ana Teixeira
CONTENTS
Press Release ………………………………………………………………………………………………
The theme of the Portuguese Intervention – Texts by Maria Helena Serôdio, Eugénia Vasques, João
Brites, Rui Francisco and Miguel Jesus:
- On the Other Side ……………………………………………………………………………………….
- An artist who represents a country as curator……………………………………………………………
- A scenographer whose work is inseparable from his theatre group …………………………………...
- Participation in the Quadrennial as a station on a path ………………………………………………..
João Brites | Biography …………………………………………………………………………………...
Exhibition project credits ………………………………………………………………………………….
Images ………………………………………………………………………………………………..……
About the 12th Prague Quadrennial - Performance Design and Space…….…………………………..
Contacts ……………………………………………………………………………………..…………….
03
04
06
07
08
10
12
13
15
17
02/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
PRESS RELEASE
The Directorate General for the Arts of the Portuguese Ministry of Culture has invited the stage director
and scenographer João Brites to officially represent Portugal at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, the most prestigious international exhibition of its kind, this year overseen by
the artistic director Sodja Zupanc Lotker. The Prague Quadrennial has been organised by the Culture
Ministry of the Czech Republic and the Prague Theatre Institute since 1967 and is nowadays a unique
international event arranged as an exhibition which along with its parallel activities creates a space for
seminars, workshops and meetings of professionals and students involved in the stage arts from around
the world. This year’s Quadrennial is organised around three main sections: Countries and Regions,
Students, and Architecture.
This is the second time that the Directorate-General for the Arts organises the Official Portuguese Representation at this Quadrennial, thus continuing institutional action meant to enhance a cultural policy that
consecrates Portuguese artists who have gained national and international recognition. In 2007, João
Mendes Ribeiro was the chosen artist; his “Architectures on Stage” won the gold medal in the “Best Stage Design” category.
On the Other Side is the project presented as the Official Portuguese Representation at this year’s Quadrennial. It is grounded on the work developed over more than 30 years by João Brites together with the
O Bando theatre group he founded and especially on his work with Rui Francisco, the co-designer and
coordinator of the exhibition project. The Portuguese Representation comprises an inseparable group of
three interventions at three distinct sites in the city of Prague: From the Back, a street installation on Franz
Kafka Square in the historic centre of Prague; From Above, an architectural intervention at St Anne’s
Church; and From Within, penetrable work, an exhibition performance in the Grand Hall of the Veletrzni
Palace. On the Other Side is the theme linking the three interventions integrated in the main sections of
the 12th Prague Quadrennial. The work of João Brites is conceptually invoked in this participation in the
event, particularly the specific material references to the spectacles “Essay on Blindness” (2004),
“Clandestine Mourning” (2006), Jerusalem (2008) and “Quixote, Opera Buffa” (2010).
03/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
Jerusalem, by Gonçalo M. Tavares | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara Bento | Scenographer: João Brites | Opening: Belém Cultural Centre, Lisbon | Opening date: 23-11-2008 | Photograph: André Fonseca
THE THEME OF THE PORTUGUESE INTERVENTION
by Maria Helena Serôdio, Eugénia Vasques, João Brites, Rui Francisco and Miguel Jesus
On the Other Side
The vertices of the triangle laid out under the skies of Prague are the street installation FROM THE BACK,
the architecture intervention FROM ABOVE and the penetrable work FROM WITHIN. Each by itself bears
the hope that they develop the principle of Spatial Representation. Their interrelationship marks the desire
that the dilemma between Architecture and Scenography should be able to emerge as a Problem of
Creativity.
From the Back
Street installation
In the wake of the show Jerusalem (2008), an installation is proposed for Franz Kafka Square in the
historic centre of Prague, with the features of a story: beginning, middle and end, with the end the
beginning and vice versa. An audience area comprising 44 chairs conveys a memory. They were taken
from Lisbon’s São Jorge Cinema – 50 years of intensive use had left them in a poor state of repair, unable
to meet the technical standards of current legislation. Arranged in four equal rows, they await their public,
facing a wall of large ceramic bricks. On the other side of the wall, a row of 11 chairs repeats the same
situation.
04/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
Jerusalem, by Gonçalo M. Tavares | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara Bento | Scenographer: João Brites | Opening: Belém Cultural Centre, Lisbon | Opening date: 23-11-2008 | Photograph: André Fonseca
From Above
Architectural intervention
Prague, St Anne’s Church – Prague crossroads. On the table (...), behind a wall of large ceramic bricks,
lives the model of Teatro O Bando’s base – a four-hectare site located in Vale de Barris amid Portugal’s
Arrábida Natural Park. There lie models of the buildings (old pig breeding sheds), scenic spaces and
stage machines which João Brites and his collective have over the years developed and considered as a
spatial definition, limiting or freeing movements and travel. This intervention is included in the Quadrennial’s architecture section.
From Within
Penetrable work
The Pavilion of the Portuguese Official Representation at the 12th Prague Quadrennial of Performance
Design and Space is in lot 2A of the Grand Hall at the Veletrzni Palace in Prague. The front is marked by
the public entrance on the lower right and, under a gallery, the respective exit via the lower left. In the
centre stands a mechanical lift structure for disabled visitors; it also serves an upper gallery where the
public can enjoy simultaneous visual and audio access to the performance under way in the bar of the
Grand Hall. This lift structure associates a physical path to the dramaturgical path begun at the bar.
Inside the penetrable, the 3-D models, photos, projected images, words and other artifices recapture the
emotion and memory of produced scenic spaces, attesting to the proposed metaphor. In the background,
a visible wall of large ceramic bricks comprising a group of eight niches repeats the seats and the public
from From the Back, under projected letters and numbers that slowly and gradually shrink over time. On
the ground, compost. The sound of people’s steps is amplified. Cyclically, a light suddenly flashes across
the atmosphere. This intervention is included in the Quadrennial’s Countries and Regions section.
05/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
JOÃO BRITES
AN ARTIST WHO REPRESENTS A COUNTRY AS CURATOR
João Brites founded the O Bando theatre Group in 1974 along with other theatre artists he had worked
with during political exile in Belgium. For the past 36 years his artistic practice and theoretical formulations have been marked by a special way of conceiving and achieving scenic space beyond
conventional stage constraints.
Brites favours theatre that surprises by its way of relating to unexpected spaces and unusual ‘stage
machines’. He has defended a broader architectural conception of set design, while at the same time
demanding that it be considered a true ‘visual action’ that can involve artists and the audience.
Involved in presenting spectacles at diverse national and international venues, João Brites is especially
fond of Portuguese folk culture, both its textual component (legends, traditions, games, plays) and its
material component of objects of everyday use, some no longer used though still marked by the
anthropological interest manifest in his stage practice. But this has not hindered him from constantly
seeking other materials, other technical skills and new technological formats for the shows he directs.
Also evident in Teatro O Bando creations are elective relationships with the modern aesthetic, vis-à-vis
architectural constructivism and the abstractionist penchant for props and figurations, or in the game of
playful parody that provocatively combines criticism and dream, deconstruction and the signs of a
sought-for social utopia.
This project is the result of an artistic path wherein theatre, space and set design have been creatively
coordinated and mutually transfigured. Its presentation at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial enables an
international dialogue clearly based on an original and ongoing work undergoing constant change and
renewal, and urges reflection about the work accomplished and ways to achieve new aesthetic inquiries
and artistic practices.
06/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
A SET DESIGNER WHOSE WORK IS INSEPARABLE FROM HIS THEATRE GROUP
Teatro O Bando has shown itself to be a hub radiating disquiet and festivity, a basis for theatrical
creation of a kind with no tradition in our country.
Since its first projects it has presented itself as a locus of social intervention, rejecting inherited theatrical
conventions. After the intense early experience of decentralisation based on an open idea of theatre for
children and young people, its language affirmed itself in line with contemporary ethno-anthropology,
albeit with echoes of Grotowski, Brook, Barba, Schechner or Mnouchkine. Yet these theatre influences
were from the start reworked by references to expressionist painting and sculpture, dissonant and
grotesque size (recalling the Bolshevik Meyerhold), the presence of the Brechtian ‘epic’, music,
technology and the most intimate crafting.
By reason of a staging concept, a scenic discourse centred on SPACE, FORM and OBJECT (even before
IMAGE) – imposing extreme embodiment of scenic actions due to the actors’ confrontation with the
‘stage machines’ and other physical obstacles – João Brites must be placed in the aesthetic line
encompassing some of the most self-reflecting plastic abstractionism (rooted in Malevich, Kandinsky or
Mondrian) and at the same time in the surrealistic line underscored by an idea of political theatre
‘hidden’ in an accentuated formal conceptualisation which in ecosophy (Guattari) weds the most
profound identifying rurality. And where these two lines of erudite and common conduct meet, a
presentation of the human grotesque rises in crescendo – the trademark of the collective.
07/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
Angels, by Teolinda Gersão | Composition: Carlos Guerreiro | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara Bento | Scenographer: Joana
Simões | Opening: Teatro O Bando, Palmela | 26-06-2003 | Photograph: Ana Teixeira
PARTICIPATION IN THE QUADRENNIAL AS A STATION ON A PATH
Before the actors’ work, the creation of Teatro O Bando shows also results from a collective working
method in which each component of a spectacle is not subservient to an assimilating whole. Through its
artistic directors, this cooperative favours ‘meeting’ or ‘gathering’ as opposed to intersection. This risky
notion of singularism, henceforward the structuring anchor of the group’s internal organisation, does not
presume to be collectivist convergence or convenience, but rather a possibility of transcendence that
guarantees individual identities.
Singularism seeks the artistic contamination of those who take on creation as a form of choosing certain
indices deriving from broad set of hypotheses, thus assuming that the most unexpected works will be
obtained, precisely because they do not result from an illuminated individual. Works become recognisable
not because they are substantiated in variants of a repeating style, but because the artistic leadership sees
itself in the trans-personal dimension of the results, expressed beyond the control and forecasting ability of
those creators. The confrontation is no more than a possibility of meeting.
Over the course of the various experiments that the Teatro O Bando artists have accomplished in the
relationship between fiction and reality, fixation and improvisation, they have always sought to represent
what can’t be represented. To materialise time, to materialise word, to materialise sound and light have
always been tracks bearing that ability to dream as the only ally. Creation’s interrelated countenance is
thus established as a means and not an end. Because theatre space exists as an inhabited place, the
border area between actor and audience is enlarged, not without taking on the artificial, metaphoric and
symbolic aspect of artistic creation, clearly opposed to a mimetic figuration of reality.
08/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
Quixote: Opera Bufa, by António José da Silva, the Jew | Composer: Jorge Salgueiro | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Maria Matteucci | Scenographer: Rui Francisco | Opening: Teatro da Trindade, Lisbon | 15-04-2010 | Photograph: Ana Teixeira
Theatre’s repeatedly used patterns and vices are acknowledged yet do not destroy the codes of creation
and reception that sustain the stuff of theatre. They neither indicate the performative demolition of theatrical
signs nor use a certain ideal of juxtaposition that affirms the act of creation as an exhausted gesture bereft
of meaning, but rather seek to ask after those signs and limits in order to expand and dilate them, to make
them material for a game that queries them precisely by feeding on them. Solutions for theatre are found
within theatre.
They advocate a theatre with actors who don’t ignore the multifaceted and interesting experience of
storytellers, narrators, comedians and performers, but who seek to renew within the problem of the actor.
A theatre that doesn’t abandon the literary quality of words as opposed to the banal nature of a plausible
conversation. A theatre that can agree to call scenic space anyplace where it can set up its scenography.
A theatre whose existence depends on the quality of its relationship with the people involved, conveniently
called the audience. A theatre whose act of fulfilment transcends the idea of how it was conceived.
Maria Helena Serôdio
Eugénia Vasques
João Brites
Rui Francisco
Miguel Jesus
Palmela, 27 January 2011
09/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
Photograph: Lia Costa Carvalho
JOÃO BRITES
BIOGRAPHY
João Brites is a playwright, stage director and scenographer, and is curator of the Portuguese Official
Representation at the 12th Prague Quadrennial in 2011. He was born in Torres Novas, Portugal, in June
1947. To avoid the colonial war his country was then waging in Africa he left for Brussels in 1966 and
acquired UN political refugee status. At the ENSAAV (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et des
Arts Visuels, La Cambre) he finished the engraving course taught by Gustave Marchoul and attended the
monumental painting and the scenography courses, respectively taught by Jo Delahaut and Serge Creuz.
With the latter he visited the then Prague Biennial in 1967. In 1974 he held some individual engraving
exhibitions
in Luxembourg, Brussels, Liège, Belgrade, Metz and Lisbon, besides taking part in several collective
exhibitions. He is represented in the Skopje Museum of Contemporary Art, the Cabinet des Estampes in
Brussels, the Luxembourg State Museum, the Belgrade Museum of Modern Art and the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. In Brussels he also worked as a scenographer at the Théâtre Poème and Théâtre
Place Publique, and founded a theatre for children called Théâtre Inti.
10/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
When the 1974 Carnation Revolution broke out he returned to Portugal and founded Teatro O Bando
and has since directed most of the shows produced by that group. He is co-founder of the Portuguese
delegation of the ASSITEJ (International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People) and has
sat on its international executive committee. In 1977 he co-organised the first Trás-os-Montes Peoples
Games in Vila Real in northern Portugal. From 1978 to 1989 he co-organised a dozen annual theatre
festivals dedicated to the creation of shows for young audiences in the scope of the CPTIJ (Portuguese
Centre of Theatre for Children and Young People). From 1999 to 2008 he was artistic director of the
FIAR International Street Arts Festival based in the town of Palmela. He served as director of the Expo’98
Spectacles Unit, which programmed hundreds of shows from several dozen countries, in various artistic
fields. In 1999 he was awarded the degree of Commander of the Portuguese Order of Merit.
Over the course of 36 years in Teatro O Bando he has elaborated dozens of scenic versions of nondramatic texts by Portuguese authors, which he later directed, besides conceiving scenic spaces in unexpected territories, idealising and sometimes building stage machines. Since 1992 he has organised
exhibitions of those stage machines at the Anthropology Museum of Coimbra University, the Dr Santos
Rocha Museum in Figueira da Foz, Culturgest, the Theatre Museum and Malaposta Cultural Centre in
Lisbon, the São João Cine-Theatre in Palmela, the Traditional Centre for Traditional Arts and Campo 24
de Agosto metro station in Porto, as well as at Querença village, as part of Faro Culture Capital activities, the Vila Flor Cultural Centre in Guimarães and finally the slope of the Serra do Louro hills, O Bando’s homebase, under the title In the Open. He has conceived and coordinated several major events for
thousands of spectators, such as the inauguration of the monument paying homage to the people of
Póvoa do Varzim and, in Lisbon, the opening of Lisbon Culture Capital in 1994, the 25th anniversary of
the April 1974 revolution and the centennial commemorations of the Portuguese Republic in 2010.
João Brites is the author of numerous articles about theatre and the creative process in Teatro O Bando
and has taken part in countless colloquiums, seminars and congresses. He currently teaches acting at the
School of Theatre and Cinema and supervises training courses and internships in the area of theatre,
besides overseeing workshops on the subject of actors’ onstage awareness. In 2004 he was awarded
the Almada Prize, while Teatro O Bando was in turn distinguished with the Medal of Cultural Merit.
With the show SAGA – extravagant opera in 2008 he won the Theatre Guide Prize for best director
and the Annual Prize of the Portuguese Association of Theatre Critics.
11/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
EXHIBITION PROJECT CREDITS
Conception and design: João Brites
Design and general coordination: Rui Francisco
Content and editing: Miguel Jesus
Implementation project: www.oxalis.pt
Structural stability: Egidio Lima Ramos
Lighting: João Cachulo
Sound: Sérgio Milhano
Electrical installations: Floríval Santos
Image and video: Amauri Tangará
Production and image: Tati Mendes
12/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
IMAGENS
01
04
05
06
08
11
14
03
02
07
09
12
10
13
15
The high-resolution images can be downloaded from
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/imprensa_en.htm
13/17
JUNE 16-26
2011
IMAGES
01_02
Jerusalem, by Gonçalo M. Tavares | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara Bento | Scenographer: João
Brites | Opening: Belém Cultural Centre, Lisbon | Opening date: 23-11-2008 | Photograph: André Fonseca
03_06
Essay on Blindness, by José Saramago | Composer: Jorge Salgueiro | Director: João Brites | Costumes:
Maria Matteucci | Scenographer: Rui Francisco | São João National Theatre, Porto | Opening date: 0605-2004 | Photograph: João Tuna
07
Happy People with Tears, by João de Melo | Composer: Jorge Salgueiro | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara Bento | Scenographer: Joana Simões | Opening: Teatro O Bando, Palmela | 13-12-2002 |
Photograph: Lia Costa Carvalho
08
Happy People with Tears, by João de Melo | Composer: Jorge Salgueiro | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara Bento | Scenographer: Joana Simões | Opening: Teatro O Bando, Palmela | 13-12-2002 |
Photograph: Ana Teixeira
09
Quixote: Opera Bufa, by António José da Silva, the Jew | Composer: Jorge Salgueiro | Director: João
Brites | Costumes: Maria Matteucci | Scenographer: Rui Francisco | Opening: Teatro da Trindade, Lisbon | 15-04-2010 | Photograph: Ana Teixeira
10
Quixote: Opera Bufa, by António José da Silva, the Jew | Composer: Jorge Salgueiro | Director: João
Brites | Costumes: Maria Matteucci | Scenographer: Rui Francisco | Opening: Teatro da Trindade, Lisbon | 15-04-2010 | Photograph: Rui Francisco
11
The Living, by Jacinto Lucas Pires | Composer: Chopin | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara Bento |
Scenography: Rui Francisco/João Brites | Opening: Citemor, Montemor-o-Velho | 19-07-2007 | Photograph: Nuno Patinho
12
Clandestine Mourning, by Jacinto Lucas Pires | Composer: Chopin | Director: João Brites | Costumes:
Clara Bento | Scenography: Rui Francisco/João Brites | Opening: FIAR, Palmela | 23-07-2006 | Photograph: Lia Costa Carvalho
13
Angels, by Teolinda Gersão | Composition: Carlos Guerreiro | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara
Bento | Scenographer: Joana Simões | Opening: Teatro O Bando, Palmela | 26-06-2003 | Photograph:
João Tuna
14
Angels, by Teolinda Gersão | Composition: Carlos Guerreiro | Director: João Brites | Costumes: Clara
Bento | Scenographer: Joana Simões | Opening: Teatro O Bando, Palmela | 06-06-2010 | Photograph:
Ana Teixeira
15
Summer Pine, by Eugénio de Andrade | Composer: Jorge Salgueiro | Director: João Brites | Costumes
Maria Matteucci | Scenographer: Rui Francisco | Opening: Palmela Historic Centre | 29-07-2001 |
Photograph: Pedro Soares
14/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm
JUNE 16-26
2011
CONTACTS
Directorate General for the Arts / Portuguese Ministry of Culture
[email protected]
www.dgartes.pt
17/17
www.dgartes.pt/pq11_portugal/index_en.htm