DeVIR @
Horta da Areia

is a community-orientated project that we’ve wanted to develop for a long time. It was the result of an application by DeVIR to the PARTIS & Art for Change Programme, promoted by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the ‘La Caixa’ Foundation, in partnership with the Vítor Reis Morais Foundation / Horta da Areia Community Centre and with the support of Faro City Council. This project has a duration of 3 years, started in 2021, and includes the presentation of a participatory creation through artistic practices for inclusion at the end of 2022 and another at the end of 2023, when it will be completed. We began by identifying two groups of women living in Faro with whom we wanted to work. Ordinary women, attentive and interested in the performing arts, whom we know as part of the public of CAPa, the Algarve Performing Arts Centre, and another group, women who live in less favourable conditions, more differentiated, not only because of their condition, but above all because of the place they live – the Horta da Areia neighbourhood. We want to give them all A PLACE, space and time, an opportunity to voluntarily interrupt their lives, challenging them to make them more complete and satisfying through empowerment, both on a personal level and on a creative/artistic, social and political level. The combination was unlikely, but justified. Today, looking back and with half the road already travelled, it’s clear that this adventure hid much that we hadn’t suspected, bigger and more complex challenges that we hadn’t counted on, but also achievements that we hadn’t imagined. In the 1st year (2021) the activities were carried out in two separate groups, in order to avoid/force premature/imposing contacts and value parallelisms. However, even though they were separate, the same content was covered, the same tools were provided and the same practices were developed with each of the groups in preparation for working together over the next two years. We knew that we didn’t want to ‘make’ artists, but above all we wanted to promote encounters and reflections through creative, potentially transformative practices that would enrich and complement their lives, but also promote positive and liberating changes on a personal, family and social level. In this 2nd year of the project (2022), Creative Workshops were held, in which previously acquired knowledge is applied and new experiences and skills are developed from a place of trust, empowerment and complicity, which has been conquered by each group, allows involvement and justifies the construction of participatory work. Next year (2023) the project will continue with new trainers, following the planned plan of activities, pursuing the aim of welcoming new participants so that it becomes more comprehensive and complete. It will culminate with a performance at the Teatro das Figuras in Faro, in a large format that involves other inhabitants of the city.

@CAPa
11 dec 16h00
travessia

After two years of many working meetings, we are ready to show you the result of a very non-linear journey, full of nuances and doubts, where the greatest achievement was the blurring of differences and the bringing together of the lives of two groups of women: the women of Horta da Areia and the women of DeVIR.
we start at the table, yes. It’s sitting at the table, a big table, that we start this show, just as it’s been there so many times, around a meal, that we’ve been reducing the distances between us, where we’ve been finding each other (…) (…) we’re talking about what we dreamed we would be and, despite all the barriers and beyond all the borders we find in front of us, here we can be happy..
a participative creation developed by Ana Matias, Ângela dos Santos, Ângela Maria dos Santos, Cristina Cantinho, Cristina Monte, Elisa Almeida, Genny Cabrita, Guiomar Figueiredo, Isabel Macieira, Isadora Justo, Manuelina Poeira, Maria Carolina Guedes, Maria Leonilde Santos, Marta Silva, Maria Vargas, Odete da Silva, Otília Fialho, Samaritana Lima, Sandrine Crisostomo, Sílvia da Silva, Sara Cruz, Tânia Monte, Vanda Santa-Rita, Vanessa António staging Pedro Alves mouvments José Laginha e Marlene Vilhena
Using techniques that have their origins in what we call ‘documentary theatre’, these two groups of women have created a vast archive made up of personal memories and stories, more or less fictional texts, photographs, videos, drawings, audio recordings, materials used to build a multidisciplinary show where theatre and dance, film and music, literature and the visual arts intersect and where, on purpose, the boundaries that we might think separate reality from fiction or life from the arts are erased.
sep / dec 2022
preparation of the show
Teatro + Movimento
with Pedro Alves, José Laginha & Marlene Vilhena
After two years of many working meetings, we are ready to show you the result of a very non-linear journey, full of nuances and doubts, where the greatest achievement was the blurring of differences and the bringing together of the lives of two groups of women: the women of Horta da Areia and the women of DeVIR.
we start at the table, yes. It’s sitting at the table, a big table, that we start this show, just as it’s been there so many times, around a meal, that we’ve been reducing the distances between us, where we’ve been finding each other (…) (…) we’re talking about what we dreamed we would be and, despite all the barriers and beyond all the borders we find in front of us, here we can be happy..
a participative creation developed by Ana Matias, Ângela dos Santos, Ângela Maria dos Santos, Cristina Cantinho, Cristina Monte, Elisa Almeida, Genny Cabrita, Guiomar Figueiredo, Isabel Macieira, Isadora Justo, Manuelina Poeira, Maria Carolina Guedes, Maria Leonilde Santos, Marta Silva, Maria Vargas, Odete da Silva, Otília Fialho, Samaritana Lima, Sandrine Crisostomo, Sílvia da Silva, Sara Cruz, Tânia Monte, Vanda Santa-Rita, Vanessa António staging Pedro Alves movements José Laginha e Marlene Vilhena
Using techniques that have their origins in what we call ‘documentary theatre’, these two groups of women have created a vast archive made up of personal memories and stories, more or less fictional texts, photographs, videos, drawings, audio recordings, materials used to build a multidisciplinary show where theatre and dance, film and music, literature and the visual arts intersect and where, on purpose, the boundaries that we might think separate reality from fiction or life from the arts are erased.



Pedro Alves was born in Sintra in 1979. He is the co-founder and artistic director of teatromosca, where he has worked as an actor, director and programme-maker. He has a degree in Artistic Studies (Performing Arts) and a Master’s degree in Theatre Studies from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon. He has attended training courses in cultural management, production, staging, project management, human resources and socio-cultural animation, among others. He attended actor training courses run by João de Mello Alvim, João Miguel Rodrigues and Adolfo Simón. As an actor, he has taken part in shows with texts by Eric Bogosian, Eça Leal, Sophocles, Stig Dagerman, Lorca, Fernando Sousa, Jean Genet, Oscar Wilde, among others, directed by Nuno Pinto, Antonino Solmer, Filomena Oliveira, João de Mello Alvim, Mário Trigo, Rui Mário, Paulo Campos dos Reis, João Miguel Rodrigues and Adolfo Simón, at Companhia de Teatro de Sintra, Dante – Compañia de Teatro de Madrid, Teatro TapaFuros, teatromosca, Teatro Focus etc. He has worked with choreographers Carla Sampaio, Daniel Cardoso and Célia Alturas. He has worked as a trainer and director for the Lisbon Faculty of Pharmacy Theatre Group. He co-ordinated a community intervention team for a Sintra Town Council project. He regularly collaborates with Quorum Ballet as dramaturg and artistic director. At Teatromosca, she has directed ‘Dog Art’, ‘Kip’, ‘The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol’, ‘Europa’, ‘Troy’, ‘Moby-Dick’, ‘The Sound and the Fury’, ‘Fahrenheit 451’, ‘Kif-Kif’, ‘The God of Flies’, ‘Ned Kelly’ and ‘Husbands’, among others. He is responsible for the cultural programme of AMAS – Auditório Municipal António Silva and the MUSCARIUM performing arts festival in Sintra.
José Laginha he studied dance at the Gulbenkian Ballet, CNBailado in Lisbon, the Cunningham Studio and was a scholarship student at the Peridance Int. Dance School in NYorque. He has choreographed and performed 16 creations and directed/choreographed the opening show of Loulé 2015, European City of Sport. In 1994 he founded DeVIR, ass. actividades culturais and implemented the ‘a sul’ Int Contemporary Dance Festival. He was the programmer of the Lethes Theatre and the Louletano Cineteatre 94-2000. In 2001 he created CAPa, the Algarve Performing Arts Centre and in 2012 the DeVIR Encounters Festival. At the same time, he is the artistic director of the DeVIR community project in Horta da Areia. He has a degree in Interior Design, completed the Drawing course at SNBelas Artes and attended the FTL Architecture course. Between 94 and 2000 he was a programmer/curator at the Espírito Santo Art Gallery. He has presented solo exhibitions in the field of visual arts.
Marlene Vilhena with a degree in Maths, she began her dance studies at E.Superior Dança and completed her training at Fórum Dança. She received a scholarship from the INOVART/DGArtes programme at DWA (NL). She has led dance workshops in Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands. As a creative dance trainer for children, she took part in the project with the gypsy community of Lejana de Cima ‘Education and Training for Rehousing’ – CM Faro, resulting in 2 public performances. She has worked as a performer/co-creator with choreographers in Portugal: José Laginha, Olga Roriz, João Costa, António Pedro Lopes, Ana Borges; in Italy: Lisa Masellis – QuaLiBò; the Netherlands: Gabriella Maiorino, Susy Blok, Malgorzata Haduch. From 2010 to 2012 she collaborated with DeVIR-CAPa, in CAPa activities and DeVIR Festival meetings, resuming this collaboration in 2020, also integrating the DeVIR project at Horta da Areia – Partis & Art for Change. In 2021 she returned to dance creation in a project shared with José Laginha. She is trained in Yoga and Massage and carries out professional activities in these areas.
7 dec 2022
work lunch
Pinheiros de Marim
with Pedro Alves and the DeVIR team
faced with some of the challenges that the project faced when an event affected the community of the women’s group in the Horta da Areia neighbourhood, which for a while put the continuity of the project at risk, we resumed in full force on 7 September, this time in a less conventional format, out of doors, as we have experienced on other occasions. It was a shared working lunch where, for the first time, we managed to bring the two groups of participants together around a bountiful table.



22 may 2022
mid-term presentation of the work with the 2 groups
play Maridos
teatromosca
“the festival is promising, it’s been months of preparation, with many hesitations, no certainties and justified fears on both sides. The desire is great and the expectations are the result of an imaginary fuelled by distance and ignorance. It will be an afternoon where the ‘show’ will put women side by side who, without knowing each other, have created a certain intimacy. It will be a revealing moment, the result of months of exchanging photographs, sharing songs, audio messages that some have spoken and others have repeated, in the form of soliloquies, lived as if they were the real owners. It’s all part of an approach strategy that will result in the normalisation of a meeting of women who ‘knew’ each other without ever having met. This first working meeting will take place on the set of the show ‘Husbands’, by the theatreromosca, based on the film of the same name by John Cassavetes. After this rehearsal and a working dinner, those involved will have the opportunity to watch the show. It will not only be an opportunity to work on a set, in a ‘house’ with furniture, dishes, pictures and lamps that hold and help to compose common stories – or at least stories that are familiar to all of them – but also to talk to the creators of this show and understand a little better the whole process that led to the creation of the same project. For the first time, each of the groups of women, in the context of a working session, will experience the complicit gaze of the other group of women, who will better understand what they are talking about, what they are telling and what they have been developing. It will be an exercise experienced on stage, in a complete setting, with rich scenography and quality light and sound, which will have the dimension of an ‘almost’ staged reading show. The desire and promise for more will remain.”


may / jul 2022
creation workshop_Movement
with José Laginha & Marlene Vilhena
experimentation with individual and group movement practices based on the materiality, plasticity, sensoriality and sensitivity of bodies: internal body (organs, viscera, bones, cavities, humidity, etc), border body (muscles, skin, extremities) external body (vitruvian) and body with/in space (straight lines, spirals, volumes, planes, points, architecture). The body that (co)responds to different stimuli, that dialogues with movement in different conversations (verbal, sensory, spatial, relational, emotional), in an organic and improvised way. Supported by voice recordings, short texts, sounds and interviews with members of the other group of women, the women of DeVIR were challenged to experiment with deconstructing movement patterns, to discover less linear expressive languages of the body, less habitual and even unexpected and unlikely. To open themselves up to perceiving and welcoming the unknown, allowing strangeness, the shapeless, looking above all for the new that we have in store and that has not yet been revealed through listening, questioning, doubting, observing, analysing impulse and surprise.
feb / jul 2022
creation workshop_Theatre
with Pedro Alves

‘I can’t wait to tell you… Can you hear me? Here, in the middle of the darkness, can you hear my voice? I want to tell you about myself and where I live. The words make their way back and forth through the streets of this city, crossing the train tracks, coming close to you, our minds wandering to the rhythm of our steps, my body becoming visible, tangible, meeting yours, you getting to know me a little better. Little by little, our voices are crossing, bringing us closer together. I’m drawing myself like this, in the hesitation and fragility of what I believe I am, I’m sketching you in what I imagine you are, dreaming of what I hope we can become, together. In my head, I’m replacing the fixed images I had with much more fluid ones, and now you could even be water, and that’s where I invite you to take a dip. Dressed in theatre, painted in letters, we offer you our videos and photographs, we propose changes, transpositions, and we invite you to visit our shelters, to cross fears, indifference and lack of hope, so that the extraordinary can be born from the everyday.’
sep / jan 2021
creation workshops
with Cláudia Jardim & Joana Manuel

beyond the railway line, beyond the railway line. If we invent a train that runs there, does that train exist even if nobody sees it go by? Is the train track just tracks or does it draw a border between Faro and Horta d’Areia? If every head is a universe, how many parallel universes do we have here, between all of us, on both sides of the railway line? How many dreamed-of carriages pass by on the empty track before the first train of the morning appears in this reality that is commonly accepted as shared? Is invention a lie? Isn’t a concept an invention? Aren’t respect, power and freedom concepts that are felt in the body? And if they are felt in the body, is there any doubt that they are truths? Where would our truths be today if nothing had been invented since the beginning of time? Where on our bodies, on both sides of the train tracks, do the truths, the lies, our projections of the other and of ourselves vibrate? Between now and December, we’re going to discover parallel tracks, tracks that intersect, and perhaps even install new tracks where compositions we haven’t yet dreamed of can run. Let’s project ourselves, reveal ourselves, respect the truth in lies and invent freedom in the truths that condition us, identify us and mark us. Let’s go? Perhaps. Or maybe, for now, we’re just inventing what we don’t yet know: what each of the women from Faro brings with her, with whom we want to travel along the rails that together we manage to install over the border.
Joana Manuel was born in Oeiras in 1976. She graduated in Singing from the Lisbon School of Music, where she taught the Voice module at the beginning of her degree in Jazz, was a member of the Gulbenkian Choir for eight years, but then went into theatre and never left. In 2011/12 and 2017/18 she taught voice in the Department of Performing Arts at the University of Évora. Since 2001 she has worked as a performer, co-creator and/or vocal coach with Fernando Gomes, Ricardo Pais, Caroline Petrick, Sérgio Godinho, Olga Roriz, Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Nuno M Cardoso, Nuno Carinhas, Fernanda Lapa, Victor Hugo Pontes, JP Simões, Ensemble Companhia de Actores, Teatro Cão Danado, Kevin Blechdom, Rui Galveias, Teatro Cão Solteiro and Teatro Praga. In between, he has also appeared on television and in films, dubbing, voice-overs and narrations, the band ‘Fungaguinhos’ (for pets) and two stagings for the opera studio of the Gregorian Institute of Lisbon. He is the lead singer of the group ‘el Sur’, which released the album ‘Todas as sombras’ in 2020. In 2016 she was lucky enough to meet Nuno Moura, who wanted her to publish two texts in the good company of Douda Correria, and out comes ‘O Espelho Invertido e Outro Texto’, with a beautiful cover by Beatriz Bagulho. He likes to read aloud. And quietly too.
Cláudia Jardim was born in Lisbon in 1977. She has worked at the Sensurround Theatre Company, in productions by Lúcia Sigalho (A Birra da Viva, Dedicatórias, Psicopata Apaixonado, Fora De Mim, Viagem à Grécia, Capriiiicho, O Cerejal and Kizomba), at the Cornucópia Theatre in productions by Luis Miguel Cintra (Filodemo and Um Homem É Um Homem) and Ricardo Aibéo (Duas faras Conjugais). She is a member of the Prague Theatre, where she develops her work as a creator and performer. She has also recently established a creative partnership with Patrícia Portela (Anita Vai A Nada, Jogo das Perguntas, Fábulas Elementares). She has also translated Heiner Müller’s Quartet and led various workshops at the Viriato Theatre, Fórum Dança and CNB and with associations such as A Avó Veio Trabalhar, Universidade Terceira da Idade da Junta de Freguesia da Misericórdia, Mais Skillz, among others. She regularly collaborates with visual artists Vasco Araújo, Javier Nuñez Gasco and João Pedro Vale and Nuno Alexandre Ferreira (Palhaço Rico Fode Palhaço Pobre).
jul 2021
thought and creation workshop
with José Laginha & Marlene Vilhena
as we come to the end of the first phase of the DeVIR project in Horta da Areia, it’s time to look back, to review and rethink what we’ve experienced and learnt from each other. RESPECT was the word that, even when unspoken and unheard, was always present in each of the sessions held. We want to continue to dissect and scrutinise it in order to find a way of overcoming the differences that will facilitate inclusion. With this aim in mind, we will be holding two workshops on 12 and 14 July, in which we intend to take stock, evaluate what we have shared and look ahead, because we have a long way to go. If we want to maintain respect for a long-term process that combines the artistic and the social, and which has brought together two very different groups of women for three years, we have to be permeable to the participants’ wishes and contributions, while respecting the previously structured programme without imposition. Let’s keep going!
may/jun 2022
photography workshop
with Elisabete Maisão
session 1
– presentation of the photographer’s trajectory, from fashion to documentary work, with a special focus on refugee camps – what is photography and different uses of this tool – documentary photography, its use and its importance in the role of capturing different realities and cultures – question of ethics in capturing and disseminating images in documentary photography – basic rules on how to photograph – light, framing, composition and focus in portrait and landscape.
session 2
– practical outdoor workshops to collect images (group of Women from the Neighborhood of Horta da Areia – Cloister of the Municipal Museum of Faro; group of Women from DeVIR – surrounding area of the Neighborhood of Horta da Areia).
session 3
– review, analysis and reflection on the photographic work carried out.


Elisabete Maisão photographer and activist. She began her career in photography working for fashion magazines and events, and in 2006, she opened her own studio, Nouvelle Photo. In 2008 he moved to Amsterdam, where he worked at “EYE – Film Institute of Netherlands” and established himself as a freelancer, continuing to provide photography training. In 2011 he inaugurated a new phase of work, traveling and documenting the daily lives of different cultures, work that resulted in his first book, “Turning the wheels – Nepal”. At the end of 2012 he worked as a photojournalist in Rio de Janeiro. Back in Europe, he became involved with the big topic: “the refugee crisis”. Between 2015 and 2016 she visited numerous refugee camps in Europe and the Middle East, working as a photographer and volunteer. In Lebanons he led photography workshops for children, which was the origin of the HOPEN project. In 2017, back in Rio de Janeiro, she held an artistic residency at Casa Rio, which resulted in the exhibition “Na Rota dos Refugiados” and led her to develop the HOPEN project in Roraima, with indigenous refugees from Venezuela..
may 2021
Practical Philosophy sessions
with Laurinda Silva

these were presentation sessions for the participants, alternatives to the common autobiographical sharing, with a proposal for exercises in order for those involved to make themselves known from different perspectives, not so much about what they do or have done in life, but transmitting their ways of being, thinking , imagine and feel, in the moment, about strategic issues that would allow for a light but sensitive sharing about each one. Some social themes also emerged, which could be transversal to the project, in order to feed the creative process, being deepened in the future, gradually, depending on the relevance for the two groups of women: identity, gender issues, empathy, communication, participation, encounter, disagreement, difference, prejudice, judgment, expectations, desires, aversions, limitations, empowerment and freedom.
Laurinda Silva born in Oliveira de Azeméis, he graduated in Philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy of Braga, Univ. Católica Portuguesa, in 2004. Since 2007, he has coordinated the Enteléquia – Practical Philosophy project, an educational project to disseminate and practice Philosophy in specific contexts. Having collected specific training in various seminars at institutions such as the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, Montclair State University – New Jerdey (with Maughn Gregory and Megan Laverty), Institut de Pratiques Philosophiques (with Oscar Brenifier). She is currently a Master’s student in Philosophy for Children at the University of the Azores. She has developed her work in the area of Philosophy for Children and in the training of adults in the same area, via thinking sessions and workshops as a facilitator of Philosophy for Young People and a Philosophy teacher in high school.


