On World Theatre Day in 2017, Teatro Maria Matos issued the challenge: to create a theatrical laboratory at a secondary school in the city of Lisbon. Almost a year later, a group of students from the Escola Secundária Dona Filipa de Lencastre have been working under the artistic direction of Pedro Penim on the project entitled Today’s the Day.
Throughout the academic year 2017/2018, Pedro Penim directed the artistic and pedagogical project, which objective was the practical experimentation of the artistic areas that work in the current context of performative and theatrical creation. The final exercise will be presented on June 5 at the school.

“A group of adolescents meet every week to engage in theatre.
Today (Monday) is the day.
It’s the day when we talk about plurality and the day when we create identities and various chronologies of various lives (of human beings? of characters? of  unicorns?).
Today’s the day when we enter into a kind of confused post-historical time, filled with various “nows”, but always passionate, because today we are passionate.
Today’s the day when we talk about “invisible dictatorships”, which are basically all the (theatrical and artistic) mechanisms that, without our thinking about them (and because they are invisible), cause us to become hidebound by certain concepts that rule and inform theatrical creation, a total act that is at the same time (and simultaneously) so free and so regulated.
Today’s the day when we breathe and vocalise.
Today’s the day when we explore the idea of artistic community and, at the same time, the need to find an individual space, and when we try to create an aesthetic and ethical domain with the aim of looking for theatrical paths that transcend all boundaries and cause myths to be broken.
And we go on searching, confronting ideas and creating both individually and collectively: and on this day one of the participants takes full responsibility for all creative acts. Because what we want is for this personal involvement and dedication to be reflected in the process and in the result, which we will present “one day”…”

Pedro Penim

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Training and direction | Pedro Penim
Guest trainers | André e. Teodósio, João Pedro Vale & Nuno Alexandre Ferreira and Vera Marmelo
Participants | Carlota Fialho Tojo, Helena Mascarenhas Santos, Francisco Oliveira, Marta Figueira, Maria Andrade, Nina Matos, Madalena Carvalho, William Greer, Mariana de Pratt Maques, Maria Inês Louro Rodrigues, Inês Otero Rondão, Hugo Jorge, Lucas Fróis
Associated professor | Teresa Barros