Online seminar via Zoom: Resistência Artística ou Resistir Através da Arte

Saturday, 20th March
Languages: Spanish/English

Enrolment was free through filling in the form available at

http://bit.ly/escola-da-resistencia4

The deadline for enrolments was 18th March

In Vivi Tellas’ own words, “Intimacy is the focus of my work. I look for theatricality outside the theatre, in unstable areas such as the intimate space, where innocence can appear. The work situation is very fragile. Intimacy is a continuous present where there are no opinions or competences, an awkward area, capable of generating unknown moments that we don’t control at all. In this meeting, I will present fragments of Las Personas, a Biodrama I made with twenty-two employees of Teatro San Martin (Buenos Aires, Argentina). It is a journey through the history of theatre and the experience of its community behind the scenes. The idea of ‘resistance’ will be developed through this support. I will give special focus to the work I have been doing with non-professional actors. Untrained bodies, innocent bodies on stage as a form of resistance.”

Vivi Tellas is one of the most influential directors in Argentinian experimental theatre. She has been distinguished as a Belknap Fellow in the Humanities Council at Princeton University (2014) and named a Distinguished Cultural Personality by the City Legislators of Buenos Aires (2015). She is the creator of Biodrama, a revolutionary project about biographies on stage. The search for theatricality outside the theatre is the central focus of her work. His unique conception of documentary theatre outside the theatre gave rise to a series of live archives with non-professional performers (Mi mamá y Mi Tia, Tres philosophers con Mustotes, Cozarinsky y su Medico, Escuela de Conducción, Mujeres Guía and Disc Jockey) and other works such as Rabbi Rabino (New York), O Rabino e seu Filho (São Paulo), La bruja y su Hija, Maruja Enamorada, Las Personas, El niño Rieznik, Los Amigos, an African Biodrama, and her latest audiovisual work, Muy Bodas de Sangre, a tragic Biodrama. Some of the highlights of her career as a director include a production of Europera V by John Cage, in Teatro Colón’s main room, and the staging of La Casa de Bernarda Alba, after Lorca, in collaboration with Guillermo Kuitca, in the Martín Coronado Room at Teatro San Martín. Her projects Teatro Malo and Proyecto Museos have also been much acclaimed. Since 2016, Tellas has been artistic director of Teatro Sarmiento, a research space at the Buenos Aires Theatre Complex.

Escola da Resistência [School of Resistance]
Directed and Coordinated by Gonçalo Amorim and Rui Pina Coelho, in a partnership between TEP – Teatro Experimental do Porto and CET.
 

At the time, TEP was preparing to premiere, in November 2021, Estética da Resistencia, a text by Rui Pina Coelho, based on his reading of the first volume of Peter Weiss’ 1975 novel, Die Ästhetik des Widerstands [The Aesthetics of Resistance]. An iconic work for the European left, it is one of the most important 20th century works of German literature. The action takes place in the late 1930s: three young workers, ages 16-17, look for ways to show their contempt for Nazi Germany. They meet in art galleries and museums and, discussing and conversing, look for links between political resistance and artistic practice. In this, Weiss highlights the incredible affinity between political resistance and art. What the novel exemplarily proposes as a form of resistance is the enjoyment of art, camaraderie, conversation and the stoppage of time. The proposal is for deceleration.
The preparation of the show attempted to respect these coordinates, proposing that the artistic team took a journey in which the contents and themes to be worked on would progressively mature.
 

This study and resistance session was the SCHOOL OF RESISTANCE

A set of artistic and/or academic sessions were to be carried out in the TEP rehearsal room*. Each moment was to be an informal meeting with the spectators, bringing the audience closer to the processes of artistic creation, blurring the boundaries between who makes and who sees, who speaks and who listens, who thinks and who learns. It thus continued TEP’s recent line of work, which has sought to encourage horizontal and collaborative processes of creation, writing and staging.

*Taking into account the constraints imposed by the Covid-19 outbreak and the recommendations of the Directorate-General for Health, the seminar with Vivi Tellas Coelho took place online. If conditions permit, the next School of Resistance sessions will take place in person.