EDUCATIONAL PROJECT | Teatro Praga

2023 | To be Shakespeare or not to be Shakespeare – that’s the question…

Cláudia Jardim and Diogo Bento are two of the artists responsible for creating Hamlet Sou Eu (2007), Romeo and Juliet (2017) and Macbad (2021), a trilogy dedicated to three Shakespearean tragedies full of death, murder, blood and revenge, which bring together a universe of bloodthirsty fatality that is usually far removed from younger audiences. They are also three works built on three classics of Western dramaturgy considered untouchable and calcified by academic studies and by the scenic approaches that have been presented over time.

One of the main challenges that has always guided them has been to make these texts accessible to young audiences. How do you arouse interest in works that are over 400 years old? Are the so-called classics timeless? What to do with the divergence of the zeitgeist? Do these narratives still make sense today? These were some of the questions they faced and tried to answer with the creation of the three shows.

It is precisely on the basis of these questions and the confrontation between the shows and the public that they propose to talk about, problematise and structure some conclusions based on their experience. For lovers of the classics, for sceptics steeped in post-modernity, but above all, for anyone who swings between the two extremes and who is interested in new approaches to the canon, wants to share doubts, develop theses, come up with some ideas and refute them in order to start everything all over again.

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For more info and bookings, contact producao@teatropraga.com

2022 | 20 000 MINUTES

What is the relationship between lectures on performance history, collective processes, identity politics and film screenings, meditation, trips to the gym and sauna? 20.000 MINUTES of f(l)ama!

20.000 MINUTES comes from an invitation by Teatro Municipal do Porto Rivoli to André e. Teodósio/Teatro Praga for the elaboration of an experimental educational laboratory which aims at thought and creation of experiences in the performatic field. The program, consisting of two weeks, is composed of training modules and moments for development of work.

The training modules will consist of content around performativity and will be the responsibility of historians Joacine Katar Moreira, Pedro Faro and Ana Bigotte Vieira, artist Diana Niepce, programmer Francisco Frazão, and “haptic” content, which follow the teaching “healthy head in a healthy body”, which includes everything from the viewing of performances to meditation practice. During these two weeks, the participants will develop parallel works whose creation will be tutored by André e. Teodósio. These works will be presented to the public. Or not!

20.000 MINUTES is a kind of house of secrets without secrets, where information will short-circuit both heads and bodies. 20.000 MINUTES today can change eternity.

Tutor: André e. Teodósio

Guest professors: Ana Bigotte Vieira, Diana Niepce, Francisco Frazão, Joacine Katar Moreira e Pedro Faro

Production: Teatro Municipal do Porto e Teatro Praga

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Laboratory between 10 to 24 September 2022

Aimed at finalist students of Porto artistic schools: ACE – Escola de Artes; Balleteatro; ESMAE – Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espectáculo; ESAP – Escola Superior Artística do Porto

2019 | WHAT IS CULTURE FOR?

In 2019, José Maria Vieira Mendes was invited by Teatro LUCA in Lisbon to give a conference for children dealing with the question “What is culture for?”. From this conference came later a book published by Planeta Tangerina, with illustrations by Madalena Matoso and with the title ‘Para que serve?’, a book that has since been translated in different countries and recently selected by the prestigious White Raven 2021 catalog, of the International Youth Library of Munich, the world’s largest international library of books for children.

This conference can be experienced with different alignments and in different formats. Either trying to deal with the broader question (“What is it for?”) or asking about the usefulness of “culture” (“What is culture for?”). Sometimes using the “conference” format, sometimes using the “conversation” format, in an informal dialogue model.

Whatever the format or the alignment, its interest will always be to introduce thought, philosophy and the idea of questioning to the younger generations, in a playful and uncomplicated way. One tries to understand where the questions come from, and for that one questions the questions. Does it make sense to ask culture what it is for? There are questions that don’t make sense. For example: How many arms does a table have? It doesn’t make sense. If we ask questions to the questions we can better understand if they make sense and it becomes easier to imagine their answers.

Age group +9

Approximate length 40 minutes

2019 | DICTIONARY

From the dramatic text DICIONÁRIO, José Maria Vieira Mendes guides a workshop in which the participants read the piece together and discuss it, taking advantage of the conversation to think about the way we read dramatic literature and how we relate to the themes suggested by the text.

DICIONÁRIO, by José Maria Vieira Mendes, intends to reproduce the experience that is not only that of a growing young person, but that lasts for life. It is about the experience of having to deal with opinions about our being, and wanting to give an opinion about the others’ being. Max, the silent protagonist of this play, will meet people who will propose other ways of “entering”, “leaving”, “dancing”, “telling”, “doing” or “living”, as if life was a dictionary and being in it was an attempt to match the definitions. But if the goal is to try to tame and grab Max, the result will be to lose him.

Audience

School audience: 13-18 years

General public: Reading groups, amateur theatre groups

2018 | ASSISTED DIRECTION 0.2

It is relatively common for venues to offer moments of gathering between artists and spectators, creating the right environment for a dialogue between who sees and who creates and makes. Rua das Gaivotas 6 and Teatro Praga’s proposal is a cousin of the first, but it intends to shield the artists from the audience and the other way around, making room for a continuity of the performance, which is not limited to the act of seeing and feeling.

That’s why we invite the viewers to form an “Assisted Direction” for 3 shows, between May 11 and June 2. After attending the shows (May 11 and 18 and June 2), the participants gather in a room and talk, under the guidance of José Maria Vieira Mendes, without secrets and in secrecy.

These posthumous moments allow confessions, exposure of affections, statements of taste, baring in mind that the intended goal would be to contribute to the awareness or the understanding of the choices, the interests, and the wishes of those who watch. The point should be that, during the talk about a performance, one may enrich the speech, thought and reasoning of our interests.

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May 11

AURORA NA AREIA | Aurora Pinho

May 18
ENTREVISTAS | Tiago Cadete

June 2
LUMI | Marko Milić

2018 | TODAY’S THE DAY

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

2017 | ACCRETION

ACCRETION, Teatro Praga’s first cycle of performances, tries to do justice to the artistic and cognitive processes that were fundamental to the group’s development both on an affective scale and on a spatial scale, ecologically and without hierarchies. In ACCRETION, Teatro Praga appropriates performances, delegates their work and pays tributes to figures of the performing arts absent in most historical discourses. The truth of having lived side-by-side and at same time with these performances, the desire to inscribe them in themselves and the desire to reactivate them led Teatro Praga to perform for the first time in its space ruadasgaivotas6, reenacting their “favourite things” and appointing their performances to other artists.

This cycle’s programme consists on 4 reenactments and also NEW PORTUGUESE CONVERSATIONS, an archive-debate (with Mónica Calle, Paula Sá Nogueira, Isabel Carlos, Cristina Peres and Mónica Guerreiro) about important Portuguese creators of the so-called “trapped generation” who contributed to the inscription of new performative languages.

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CATECHISM

CATECHISM wants to open itself as a moment for thinking, a mixture of doubtful intimacy and intolerant preaching, served by periods of action in the old Greek spirit and artistic jumps. The classes in this course are art full of itself, where we will manage incompatible egos, who are absolutely certain of everything that they violently deny the day after. It’s a prelude of university, inspired by the ignorant master and not by the old wise professor. We will not be together. There is no such thing as sharing a meaning and a generous interactivity. There isn’t even the slightest hope of understanding each other. We are opening a department for comunication with no guarantees. The participants are expected to take the initiative, to read, listen and adore, because without faith you can’t move the sea or conquer the world. The ambition is enormous so that the fall may be more vertiginous.

2014 | MYTHOLOGICAL CONFERENCES

Mythological Conferences is a project by J. M. Vieira Mendes. Based on the form of conference, the author will follow part of the investigation, which he has been developing for the past three years, on the history of theatre and dramatic literature and the sequence of myths or narratives that were built by critical theory and by the artists themselves culminating in a contemporaneity which, in many occasions, reveals little clarification and loses itself in paralizing disputes.

2014 | EURO-NEURO

Every day we have to face our European legacies. In the streets, when we celebrate our birthday, when we watch the Olympics, when we go to an exhibition, when we fight, when we say words of love… George Steiner once wrote that Europe must learn how to deal with the legacies of Greece and Israel (i.e. the inventions of reason and faith) and that being a European is an attempt to negotiate morally, intellectually and existentially with the ideals and the praxis of the cities of Socrates (Athens) and Isaiah (Jerusalem), with the tension between Hellenes and Jews. Europe is a big house, a place of memory and comfort. But it also holds a history of famine, ethnic cleansing, genocide, torture, wars and epidemics. It’s true we feel protected and warm in our homes, under this common roof. However there’s a shadow hanging over this region. There is a dark side to this sovereignty of memories, this self-definition of Europe as “lieu de mémoire”. Together with the participants we will explore these relations between Athens and Jerusalem, past and present, attempting to create texts, scenes, theory and ideas around our own work and universe, and to create a possibility of a performance where Europe’s nerve (neuron/ νεῦρον) will be fought, discussed and negotiated.

2013-2014 | WORKSHOP CYCLE

The workshop cycle Chroniques du Bord de Scène, promoted by MC93, provides a space for learning and meetings in which guests from various areas of the performing arts explore a theme with the students of French theater conservatories.

In this sixth season, Pedro Penim and José Maria Vieira Mendes were challenged to direct a masterclass with students from the Conservatoire de Bobigny, Pantin and Aubervilliers / La Courneuve.

After a week of work at the end of 2013, in which we worked around issues such as what an actor, a person, a show and a text, with some practical exercises from the original text of José Maria Vieira Mendes, Seniors, students and members of the Prague Theater met again for another two weeks in April 2014 to prepare a public performance for April 18 and 19, 2014 at the MC93 theater.

The show, the result of this work, was presented again, in an exceptional capacity and by the students’ will, in June 2014 at the Théâtre Fil de L’Eau in Pantin (Paris).

2013 | ONCE UPON A LIE…

The world is a mess and so are we!

Although undeniable that we all have a sense of identity and are proud of ourselves, it is also true that time and again we leave our comfort zone: no, after all I won’t have chocolate ice-cream; in the end I didn’t get sick after five long hours stuck on traffic, in spite of being dead tired I didn’t sleep a wink. We are many things, we are made of many desires and wishes, we are of many colours, in short: we are peculiar.

But what comforts us in the middle of all the confusion, is knowing we are not alone. Rather we are in quite good company. Because even the charming princes and beautiful princesses have their own problems and quirkiness, the things that stay underneath, that they forget to share with the rest of us. Because they eat, make love, cut classes just like we do, they too have problems in expressing themselves or are as awkward as the rest of us, they too can’t reach the ATM machine, are sick from time to time, take pills, get motion sick in cars, quarrel with their siblings, fight in civil lawsuits, our knights in shining armour, our Cinderellas, Snow Whites, Little Mermaids, Thumbelinas and Red Riding Hoods have so much to tell, so much more we don’t know.

And that is the reason we need a show about all this. And the show is called… Once Upon a Lie

Following an invitation from the Pavilion of Knowledge in the context of its new exhibition Once Upon a Time… we decided to expose the other side of the characters. To see Alice and all our other fantastic friends on the other side of the mirror, revealing their intimacy.

Once Upon a Lie… will help us replying to those who repeat the usual spiel all the time: everything you say to me is fabulous, but it is just not right. I’ll tell you how it is!

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A show from Teatro Praga
Concept | André e. Teodósio, J.M. Vieira Mendes, Pedro Penim
Cast | Cláudia Jardim, Diogo Bento, Diogo Lopes, Patrícia da Silva, Pedro Penim, Joana Barrios
Light design | Daniel Worm d’ Assumpção
Scenography and props | Bárbara Falcão Fernandes
Production | Elisabete Fragoso, Catarina Mendes
Running time | 20 minutes

2013 | OLD AGE . WORKSHOP

Along with the show Old Age, José Maria Vieira Mendes offers to discuss the play he wrote under the same name, as a pretext for a conversation on the relation between text and show or theatre and literature, and also of actors and writers, of prejudice and hegemonies, of freedoms and warranties, of feeling with money, of dictionaries and grammar, or births and deaths, or books and videoclips, of pencils and pens, of dichotomies and parataxis and so on.

This workshop follows the model of the series of workshops and activities Teatro Praga develops under the name Catechism.

2013 | ISAAC

God said to Abraham Kill me a son…
Abe said: where you want this killing done?
Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited

How can we perform a show about “animal rights” without being fondly paternalistic? How can we tell a story as ancient as the world, as essential as oxygen, without being boring? How can we talk about our civilizational inheritance, a legacy that passes on from parents to children and leads us to assume responsibilities about the world’s future? ISAAC’s plot aims to answer these questions, taking the form of one of Walt Disney’s older movies. It is a show that uses the classical to try and take a step forward. The story counts on three crucial contributions: each spectator will assume the role of Isaac. Pedro Penim will play the father. And Rita, our dog, will take the unexpected role of the sheep.

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2012 | KINGS’ TALES

In this proposal of the Teatro Praga, the Arabian “OneThousand and One Nights” are Tales of Kings which are worth gold but are exchanged ‘for nickels’.

Right in the middle of the Gulbenkian Gardens, four stories, told by two pairs of actors, guide the spectators by the narrative suggesting them and encouraging them to participate actively. After having formulated the narrative assumptions, having the characters been presented and the plot summarized with speed and simplicity, they transform the imagination into a theater and dress the spectators of heroes, enemies, thieves, princesses and monsters. With only a poster, a rug or a turban, the scenery is done with little, but everyone can get into the story, say the magic words and be Ali Baba, Aladdin and the Prince Bright. The proposal of the Theatre Prague is a game of discovery and representation that approaches the stories of those who hear them, turning the spectators into tellers.

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Cast | André e. Teodósio, André Godinho, Catarina Campino, Diogo Bento, Joana Barrios, J. M. Vieira Mendes
Production | Cristina Correia

2011 | KILLER GIRLS

“The true hero is always a hero by mistake; he had the dream of becoming an honest coward like everyone else.” Umberto Eco

We started by choosing super-powers, our suits and new names for super-heroins. We took advantage of our biggest flaws: the invisible woman was the teenager nobody ever noticed and who learned that invisibility could be a super-power. We created our alter-egos and we got back at the times we were told “you are not allowed”, “you can’t do it” and “this is not for you”.

KILLER GIRLS is a Girl Power show, a catsuit party, a time-bomb. The countdown has started… We kill our fears “live”, we fight and run in high heels. We are not going to give up. This time, even if we are told this is not for us, we show you our middle finger, we stick our tongue out and we take it to the end. We are the boss now. Let’s party! KILLER GIRLS is a party and since it’s our party, we cry if we want to!

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A show by Teatro Praga

2010 | DO YOU GET THE PICTURE ?!

Performance for teenagers (between 10-15)

What was the First Republic? How many where they? Who was it? During 16 years there were 7 Parliaments, 8 Presidents and 45 Governments.

It’s 1000000 years concentrated in 16. Living. Killing. Dynamite. It’s time for the overly. For the excessive. For speed. Stories after stories.

What if we resume the 16 years that seem like 1000000 in 60 minutes? What if we go beyond the speed of the Republic, of the revolution, the horses, the troops, the wars, the governments e parliaments, the birthdays and party rockets, what if we where faster than everyone and shuffle the order around, stop at the accessory and complicate the story?

We’re going to reject the linearity and make drawings, sketches. We’re going to explain the Republic without explain. We’re going to play ignorant teachers and swap the bomb wires. Nothing more to say, because everything will always stay to be told. Two actors, some props, a board to write on, some pictures to illustrate. Music and motion. We’re going to sweat.

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Co-creation | José Maria Vieira Mendes and Pedro Penim
Cast | Joana Barrios and Luís Filipe Silva
Scenography | Bárbara Falcão Fernandes
Production | Catarina Mendes, Cristina Correia, Pedro Morgado
Co-production | Teatro Praga, Comédias do Minho, Centenary of Portuguese Republic
Running Time | 50 minutes

2009 | JACK THE DRIPPER

Jackson Pollock, American deep into the world: the ultimate elliptical incursion by the process of meteoric rise, fall and bounce of abstraction from that drunk was probably the greatest American painter of the twentieth century.

What is the importance of the accident in Western art?
What is the importance of the West in accidental art?

In Granda Pinta [Jackson Pollock, (…) probably the greatest American painter of the twentieth century] you, little detective, you’ll be able to investigate the body of the works of the serial painter Jackson Pollock. Following the clues and formulating hypotheses, uncover at autopsy that the abstraction may not be more than a victim of “aesthetics materialization of the accident”…

Enlist yourself on our forces of elite and come to unravel this suspect theory.

Let’s take the Action Man in action!

Who is not with us is against us…

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A show by Teatro Praga

Cast | Catarina Campino, Cláudia Jardim, Pedro Penim
Production | Joana Gusmão, Pedro Pires (Teatro Praga)
Co-production | Teatro Praga, Teatro Maria Matos (Educational Project)

2008 | ANITA GOES NOTHING

ANITA loves the mountain, the sea, the nature and she also likes to play with dolls. Anita is sociable, a loyal companion, a dynamic person, young and lovely. Anita is perfect.

Anita was born in 1954 but she’ll always be young and pretty and she never needs Botox or Prozac or moral support. ANITA always wears nice lingerie bought at petit bateau. And she has very expensive toys.

Anita is the best at everything, she always knows everything and she’s got the right attitude. Anita can do anything and does everything, because Anita has everything. And if she can do anything, then we can too, because Anita is the hero hidden inside every one of us.

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2008 | SUPERNOVA

They live in the kingdom of Megalopsychia and they have different shapes. Their life as competitive spatial gladiators la a target: F (for Future). To get there, the Supernovas are always trying to bring down the monster/master… and frequently burning themselves. Although lay said they’re an endangered species, we hope they won’t give up. For further information lay MegalopsychoLandia™ and introduce the code L (Life) = 365 in your consoles.

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2023 | To be Shakespeare or not to be Shakespeare – that’s the question…

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2022 | 20 000 MINUTES

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2019 | WHAT IS CULTURE FOR?

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2019 | DICTIONARY

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2018 | ASSISTED DIRECTION 0.2

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2018 | TODAY’S THE DAY

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2017 | ACCRETION

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CATECHISM

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2014 | MYTHOLOGICAL CONFERENCES

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2014 | EURO-NEURO

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2013-2014 | WORKSHOP CYCLE

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2013 | ONCE UPON A LIE…

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2013 | OLD AGE . WORKSHOP

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2013 | ISAAC

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2012 | KINGS’ TALES

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2011 | KILLER GIRLS

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2010 | DO YOU GET THE PICTURE ?!

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2009 | JACK THE DRIPPER

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2008 | ANITA GOES NOTHING

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2008 | SUPERNOVA