WORSTWARD ON traces a vertiginous path about what it means to live in society, especially in the current sociopolitical moment in Brazil and the world. Holding hands, the six performers move each in their own way, forming an amorphous mass, always united, but confused and disconnected. As if they wanted to walk ahead and together, even if they do not get anywhere or can no longer stand the route. Like the end of party, an end of hope, but which does not paralyse, on the contrary: in despair, one always tries to react, even if one is only digging its own grave. Resulting of the dialogue between Inquieta Cia. and artists Marcelo Evelin and Thereza Rocha, the show moves among languages (theatre, dance and performance) and it derives from studies on the dramaturgy that arises from the body, its gestures and expressions, and resonates beyond it.

From Ceará, Inquieta Cia. does not stick to functions or references in its research and artistic activities. It invests in collective concepts and in works that mobilize the artistic status and society, dealing with the uniqueness and diversity of bodies. Amid it works are Metrópole, Esconderijo dos Gigantes and WORSTWARD ON. Since 2016, research over PIOR (WORST) has generated other materials, such as the performance installation Derivações do PIOR, the photographic exhibition \Ainda PIOR de Novo\ and the \arquivo do PIOR\, published in the magazine VAZANTES invited by Universidade Federal do Ceará, which resumes the research and its actions. The group also acts on education, offering courses and workshops-performances.

CRITICS

The work is touching violence, sometimes euphoric. Always continuous, and although at times it seems muffle, it is never settled. Moving on, even if we fall apart. It is the utmost metaphor for the human condition as they show us.

 HENRIQUE ROCHELLE, dance critic 

Forwards the Worst does not involve making believe. There is the work: alive and present. Figurative language and demonstrative movement do not fit, and the six performers know it. The work gains power precisely by sincere repetition, by spontaneous movement. The show is only worth the sweat spilled onstage. That’s all.

RENATO ABÊ, O Povo

And I saw myself that way: pushed, asleep, carried, hypnotized, wrecked, gagged, kneeling, dumb, locked, flogged. And it’s been like this … Worst of all, it’s not just me! There were so many people there. The whole humanity, the whole life, the whole existence. The more I saw myself, the more I saw others in me. What is left? See yourself. Gratitude makes her Restless. Life it is. A must-see!

ROSA PRIMO, dancer and teacher of the UFC Dance course

TECHNICAL SHEET

PERFORMERS: Andréia Pires, Andrei Bessa, Geane Albuquerque, Gyl Giffony, Lucas Galvino, Wellington Fonseca
ASSESSMENT: Marcelo Evelin
DRAMATURGIC COLLABORATION: Thereza Rocha
SOUND: Uirá dos Reis
SET: Inquieta Cia. And Caroline Holanda
COSTUMES: Isac Sobrinho and Mallkon Araújo
LIGHTING: Inquieta Cia. And Walter Façanha
GRAPHIC PROJECT: Andrei Bessa
PHOTOS: Chun, Igor Cavalcante Moura, Éden Barbosa, Rômulo Juracy and Thiago Sabino
PRODUCTION: Inquieta Cia.

A short surrealist text by the French Georges Bataille, The Solar Anus inspires the work of Maikon K who creates a kind of scenic ritual based on the subjects covered by the book – such as the criticism of the civilization concept and social rules, besides questioning the way we deal with pleasure and death. The artist moves around performance, theatrical and musical blocks, bringing up the erotic drive enclosed in suppression and taboos. Over the performance, speeches and objects are used and then ditched: it is as if the body, failing to be transcended or silenced, would be divided and decomposed into different voices and images. The performer also evokes the surrealist and ecstatic writing of Bataille’s text, joining gestures and images that, placed side by side, lose or change their original meaning.

Performance artist, Maikon K started his studies in the performing arts. Graduated in social sciences focusing on theatre anthropology, since 2002 he has researched ways to change consciousness through rites and movement. Moved by shamanic practices, his work pinpoints on the body and its ability to change perceptions. In his works, the performer unfolds in several realities through particular techniques and expressions, such as song, non-verbal sound, dance and ritualized activities. Some of his shows are Corpo Ancestral, DNA de DAN and Neblina Canibal.

CRITICS

Maikon K’s performance and Bataille’s thinking remind us that we cannot shirk in the face of our finitude, with all that it is unsettling. Instead of trying to bypass or domesticate it, Bataillian thought and the art of Maikon K promote an encounter with it. Hence, if we want to address this issue in its radicalism, we can say that The Solar Anus teaches us to die.

DANIEL VERGINELLI GALANTIN, Bocas Malditas

TECHNICAL SHEET

CONCEPT AND PERFORMANCE: Maikon K
ASSESSMENT: Patrícia Saravy
LIGHTING: Fábia Regina
SOUND: Beto Kloster
COSTUMES: Faetusa Tezelli
SET TECHNICIAN: André Baliú
SOUND ADVISING: Iria Braga
VIDEO: Tathy Yazigi (recording) and Stephany Mattanó (edition)
PRODUCTION: Corpo Rastreado
PHOTOS: Lauro Borges

This show was devised with the support of Prêmio Funarte Myriam Muniz de Teatro 2015

The many “bullshit” faced daily by peripheral youth, refugees and minorities in general were the basis of the Original Bomber Crew’s work. Politics, patriarchy, colonialism “bullshit” and the breaking battle issues that generate clashes for survival. The artists who created the show perform close to the audience guided by a metallic, dense and urban sound. Brazil’s violence and the reality of bodies held disposable around the world are expressed in movements with breaking and hip-hop elements. The play is a conflict, an explosion, a wilful act to involve the other.

Original Bomber Crew is an organization of practices, research and production on hip-hop culture. Operating since 2005, it is a Piauí reference in street dance training. Taking part in festivals, battles and national and international meetings, it currently occupies Casa do Hip Hop, in Teresina, along with other local artists. The group develops shows, performances, battles, urban interventions, festivals and dance workshops in Piauí and neighbouring states.

CRITICS

What Original Bomber Crew achieves is the foundation that will remain in the core of each moment, scene, performance: the unknown expectation, which, in the urban ambience, becomes tangible fear that strikes us at every corner, a burnt-out lamp, a stranger that don’t ignore us. Thus, tReta – and the name says a lot – reaffirms the civilizing destroyed on the choices by this multiple layered aggressive sociability. As there are only men, the performers bring to the show the typical masculine violence, which is affirmative by the body and gesture, by the dominant’s aggressive existence.

RUY FILHO, Antro Positivo

TECHNICAL SHEET

CONCEPT: Allexandre Santos and Cesar Costa
DIRECTION: Allexandre Santos
DEVISED AND PERFORMED BY: Allexandre Santos, Cesar Costa, Javé Montuchô, Malcom Jefferson, Maurício Pokemon and Phillip Marinho
MUSIC CONCEPT: César Costa and Javé Montuchô
TECHNICAL COORDINATION AND LIGHTING DESIGN: Javé Montuchô
PHOTOGRAPHY: Maurício Pokemon
MANAGING ASSISTANCE: Humilde Alves
PRODUCTION DIRECTION: Regina Veloso / CAMPO Arte Contemporânea
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Artur, Cleydinha, Neném, Fedó, Jell, Pangu, Pangulim, WG, Gui Fontineles and Marcelo Evelin

Work developed in Teresina (PI) during research and creation residencies at Casa de Hip Hop (2017/2018), Espaço Balde (2018) and CAMPO Arte Contemporânea (2017/2018)

The show, whose work in progress was presented in the previous edition of MITsp, is part of Janaina Leite’s broader research about the real in theatre – now focusing on the obscene. From the theoretical text Stabat Mater (in Latin, there was the mother), by philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, the artist and researcher proposes the format of a performance-lecture about women, going back to Virgin Mary’s story, trying at the same time to account for her mother’s deletion in her previous play, Conversas com Meu Pai. Escorted by her own mother and the figure of Priapus, a character performed by a porn actor, she radically articulates historically conflicting themes such as motherhood and sexuality. Having terror and pornography as aesthetic bases, Leite examines the origins of a historical deal between the feminine and the masculine, which the work tries to disarm without first taking risks and facing the systems of orgasm and pain securing these positions.

Janaina Leite has a consolidated research on documentary and autobiography in Brazilian theatre. She is currently developing her Performing Arts PHD supported by Fapesp, at Escola de Comunicação e Artes (ECA/USP). She created the shows Festa da Separação: Um Documentário Cênico, Conversas com Meu Pai and Stabat Mater, for which she was nominated, in 2019, for the Shell Theatre Award in the dramaturgy category. She published the book Autoescrituras Performativas: do Diário à Cena, reinforcing her research in documentary theatre. Leite idealized and coordinated the study groups Feminino Abjeto 1, Memórias, Arquivos e (Auto) Biografias and Feminino Abjeto 2. She is also co-founder, actress and director of Grupo XIX de Teatro, with whom she created and performed in several shows recognized by the main awards and support funds in the country.

CRITICS

The enacting highlight which, in fact, starts from a huge authorial text, is the clash proposed by the author, systematically, patiently and generously between reality and representation. From simple extremes, such as the strong effect of the fake slap in the face, to epistemological ones, such as the intangible real, or the endless trauma, there is an honest and diligent effort to show the story of a vertical exploration of truth’s being and suggestion. Yes, perhaps this is no longer theatre in many aspects, but it is subversive mainly because even without any personal or artistic modesty, it succeeds to represent the unrepresentative it challenges.

LUIS FERNANDO RAMOS, theatre critic and researcher   

The idea to create an explicit sex scene between Janaina and a porn actor endorses the obvious connection of Stabat Mater with Angélica Liddell’s theatre. As in the creations of the Catalan multi-artist, male violence against women emerges as a theme and the performative plan invites the actress to expose the body to extreme situations. At first, the premise aims at a subversion of two axes: the rape victim, the body previously tortured, will now be in control. And the mother, always silent, will be urged to shock and move.

MARIA EUGÊNIA DE MENEZES, Teatro Jornal

TECHNICAL SHEET

CONCEPTION, DIRECTION AND DRAMATURGY: Janaina Leite
PERFORMANCE: Janaina Leite, Amália Fontes Leite and Priapus
SPECIAL PARTICIPATION: amateur Priapus (Lucas Asseituno) and professional Priapus (Loupan)
DRAMATURG AND DIRECTION ASSISTANT: Lara Duarte and Ramilla Souza
DRAMATURGIC COLLABORATION: Lillah Hallah
GENERAL ASSISTANT: Luiza Moreira Salles
ART DIRECTION, SET AND COSTUMES: Melina Schleder
LIGHTING: Paula Hemsi
VIDEO INSTALLATION AND EDITING: Laíza Dantas
SOUND DESIGN AND SOUND AND VIDEO TECHNICIAN: Lana Scott
LIGHTING TECHNICIAN: Maíra do Nascimento
VOCAL COACH: Flavia Maria
SCENIC INPUT: Kenia Dias and Maria Amélia Farah
AUDIOVISUAL CONCEPTION AND SCRIPT: Janaina Leite and Lillah Hallah
PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTION: Wilssa Esser
VIDEO PARTICIPATION: Alex Ferraz, Hisak, Jota, Kaka Boy, Mike and Samuray Farias
VISUAL IDENTITY, PROJECTIONS AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Juliana Piesco
PRESS: Frederico Paula – Nossa Senhora da Pauta
PHOTOS AND VIDEO RECORD: André Cherri
PRODUCTION AND CIRCULATION DIRECTOR: Carla Estefan
PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Metropolitana Gestão Cultural

Preto Amparo’s solo proposes the decolonization of the look towards the black body – that is, a change on this viewing that historically ratifies violence. The show appropriates this violence as an aesthetic and creative device to erase, pierce and reconfigure them. Using elements such as a toy police vehicle, a bag of coffee and a packet of popcorn, the scenes are shaped by the journey of a young black man in society, affected by police approaches, the ongoing genocide and the hypersexualization of his body. In addition to it, urban elements and contemporary rites of passages. Offering a dialogue between the ancestry and the life of the young urban black, the performer bears an experience that seeks new chances for thinking about black aesthetics in the scenic, artistic and cultural domains.

The artists Preto Amparo, Alexandre de Sena, Grazi Medrado and Pablo Bernardo do not define themselves as a group or a company, but as an ancestral reconnecting aiming to nationally strengthen black networks, such as Segunda PRETA (MG), Segunda Crespa (SP) and Segunda Black (RJ). The research which violent. derived from started when Preto Amparo in a short scene presented it at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), during an artistic occupation. After some gigs, Alexandre de Sena begun directing, Grazi Medrado got into the production and Pablo Bernardo arrived to take over the records. The play was performed at theatre and dance festivals in Minas Gerais, Bahia, São Paulo and Piauí. In 2019, the solo was awarded the Prêmio Leda Maria Martins de Artes Cênicas Negras de Belo Horizonte as the best long-lasting play.

CRITICS

violent. is silently synesthetic … We can physically feel the presence of that naked black body. And I am not referring to that fetish look, which can only see and interpret the black body in place of desire. I am not talking about the male body, the blackness that only “offers” fear or violence. No. At least not for me. I am speaking of a black body that refutes the official history and the ordering of knowledge, resulting from the social hierarchy. Of a body mapped by racialized individual and collective identity practices and marked by gender. And mainly there, of a trimmed body, in performance and that is performance that protects, nourishes and creates a violent and sweet challenging aesthetic.

SORAYA MARTINS, Horizonte da Cena

The play goes in the opposite direction to the “long texts” verbiage of the identity discussions in recent times, betting on subtlety for a grim and, as its title says, violent theme: Brazilian structural racism.

MIGUEL ARCANJO PRADO, UOL

TECHNICAL SHEET

PERFORMANCE: Preto Amparo
DIRECTION: Alexandre De Sena
DRAMATURGY: Alexandre de Sena and Preto Amparo
PRODUCTION: Grazi Medrado
PHOTO AND VIDEO REGISTER: Pablo Bernardo
LIGHTING: Preto Amparo
PHYSICAL PRACTICE: Wallison Culu / Cia Fusion De Danças Urbanas
SOUNDTRACK ADVISOR: Barulhista

A badly ended party, traces of intimacy through space and fragments of a musical gangbang fill the room. Macaquinhos’ latest work is a performative installation that enlighten human zoos held in colonizing countries in Europe during the 20th century. The collective continues its research rubbing body, politics and the limits of contemporary aesthetic expressions against each other and provokes asking “What is North in each of us?”. Invited to devise the work by Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and the I*mpossible Bodies Festival in Germany, the group brings a colonial hangover experience shared between performers and audience. It is a sensory environment filled with smells and sounds, a place for expectations that questions what is domestic and what is spectacular.

Since 2011 Macaquinhos group has operated as an even and collaborative creation space. It is formed by a rotation of transdisciplinary artists who have São Paulo as a convergence spot. The group’s research base is the tension between body, politics, dance and performance. In 2014, the show Macaquinhoswent viral on social networks and caused a series of debates about the role of art after the performers examined the anus as the body’s south metaphor. Their new work, ZOO, continues the research, now aimed at relations with the North. The collective has participated in festivals in Brazil, Germany, Austria and Belgium.

CRITICS

Macaquinhos collective has a unique availability, creating fragile and constructive possibilities, for new circumstances in the present and future. Using the Brazilian context, these artists devise urgent questions of our time, blend collaborative creations and new expressions in a sterling way, moving in an impressive way between theory and practice, which they forge together. In a violent world, Macaquinhos manage to provoke using tenderness methods. All of its radical vulnerability erupts in choreographed body poetry. Thus, the collective denies hegemony and produces a diversity that starts from down below!

ELISA LIEPSCH, German playwright

TECHNICAL SHEET

CONCEPT, DIRECTION AND PERFORMANCE: Andrez Lean Ghizze, Caio, Danib.ar.ra, Feliz, Kupalua, Luiz Gustavo, Marine Sigautand Rosangela Sulidade
LIGHTING: Helô Duran and Lucas Brandão
ARTISTIC COLLABORATION: Carol Mendonça, Elisa Liepsch and Kontouriotis
EXECUTIVE PRODUCTION: Corpo Rastreado
CO-PRODUCTION: Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt
SUPPORTED BY: Programa de Residência Artística Obras em Construção, Casa das Caldeiras, Residência Artística Instituto Terra Luminous, Centro de Referência da Dança da Cidade de São Paulo and Frankfurt LAB
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Alessandra Domingues , Guilherme Godoy, François Pisapia, José Fernando Peixoto, Marcelo Evelin, Teresa Moura Neves, Yuri Tripodi and all of the participants of Experimento Milgrau

The environmental and human impacts caused by the construction of hydroelectric plants in the Madeira river basin, in Rondônia, triggered the artist from Manaus, Leonardo Scantbelruy to create the solo, the first work of Coletivo Mona. The performer manipulates symbolic and regional elements to examine the risk of the Amazon life, marked by colonization cycles. Inspired by the work of the painter and sculptor Olivier de Sagazan and the choreographer Elisa Schmidt, the performer uses a cassava paste to gradually dismantle himself and investigate through body metaphors the emotional and psychological state of a body crossed by an environmental shock that violates countless rights.

Coletivo Mona is a network of independent artists from Manaus who currently live in Manaus, Portugal and France. Their common interest is to decentralize art and make it more democratic. Recolon, the group’s inaugural work, was awarded the Prêmio Funarte de Dança Klauss Vianna (2014) and toured in Manaus, Rondônia, Florianópolis, Spain and Bolivia. the shows Transformação / Invisibilidade, A Ver Estrelas, Passarinho and Akangatu are also part of the repertoire. Mona took part in the Spanish festival Emergentes, the International Biennial of Circus, in France, and held the first Fest Rap, in Manaus.

CRITICS

I intend that this narrative, which observes and exposes the action of dams in the Amazon, is a device that enables to trigger other perceptions of colonizing structures immersed in our life. To realize and raise awareness is a small step towards the revolution against all types of exploitation.

LEONARDO SCANTBELRUY, director and performer

TECHNICAL SHEET

CONCEPT, DIRECTION AND PERFORMANCE: Leonardo Scantbelruy
ASSESSMENT: Gilca Lobo and Elisa Schmidt
DIRECTION ASSISTANCE: Francisco Rider
LIGHTING AND SOUND DESIGN: Daniel Braz
COSTUMES: Preta Scantbelruy
SUPPORTED BY: Coletivo Mona, Movimento Levante MAO and Coletivo Difusão

MEXA is an artistic collective that works with marginal people. In Terminal Songbook, the group starts examining photographs and videos produced about themselves. The performers relate to the recorded images and ask themselves which of them would like to tell the story of their present. The group has been acting since 2015 and, over that time, some members disappeared, others reappeared, there were those who tried to kill themselves, those who transitioned, who had a daughter, who were arrested or hospitalized, changed country, profession, name. Together, these small stories tell the group’s always procedural narrative, which works from their own experiences to be transformed onstage. With each performance, MEXA re-enacts and edits a new film in real time, through translation and dubbing exercises. In doing so, artists reflect on what it means to be an image, what remains when everything else disappears and how, being a collective body, to walk together.

MEXA was created in 2015 after episodes of violence in some reception centres in São Paulo. The group carries out actions that move between art and politics, assuming places of speech and failure of concepts that seek to frame bodies and aesthetics. It is made up of people in vulnerability situation, homelessness and members of the LGBTT community who, based on drifts, performances, writings and protests, create borderline works that do not fit into precise categories. The collective has already performed in venues such as Esponja, Casa do Povo, Pinacoteca and Jaqueline Martins gallery, it has also participated in exhibitions such as VERBO, held by Galeria Vermelho, and the 11th Bienal Sesc de Dança. In 2019, it was awarded the Prêmio Denilto Gomes de Dança in the views on black and gender aesthetics category.

CRITICS

This type of potential physical danger may be rare for me, as a white man, but it is an aspect of the performers’ daily lives of the MEXA Group, a collective formed in 2015 by predominantly black, trans and LGBT artists, theatre artists and activists. There was no victimization in the performance: instead, in neon light, they sang, moved and danced in solo and together.

 OLIVER BASCIANO, Art Review [about previous performance presented at Jaqueline Martins gallery] 

The group brought a cry of anger: we all must see the world as it is! The bodies get up. The bodies have a voice. They have music. They have names: Tatiane Dell Campobello, Barbara Brito, Anne Dourado, Patricia Borges, Yasmin Bispo and Anita Silvia. They have wills. They are trans. They wear haute couture. They live on the streets, but they also frequent art galleries.

CAROLLINA LAURIANO, Terremoto [idem]

TECHNICAL SHEET

GENERAL DIRECTION: Grupo MEXA
GROUP CONCEPT: Anita Silvia and Dudu Quintanilha
DRAMATURGY: João Turchi
AUDIOVISUAL DIRECTION: Dudu Quintanilha
BAND: Alessandro Lins dos Anjos, Dourado, Barbara Britto and Giulianna Nonato
PRODUCTION: Lu Mugayar
PERFORMERS: Daniela Pinheiro, Ivana Siqueira, Tatiane del Campobello, Patrícia Borges, Yasmin Bispo, Luiza Brunah Wunsch, Fabíola Dummont, Muniky Flor, Roberto Lima Miranda, Kristen Oliveira e Anita Silvia, Alessandro Lins dos, Barbara Britto, Dourado, Dudu Quintanilha, Giulianna Nonato, João Turchi, Laysa Elias, Lu Mugayar
GRAPHIC PROJECT: Celso Longo
LIGHTING: Helo Duran
IMAGE CAPTURE: Laysa Elias
MAKE UP: Lavínia Favero e equipe

Group in residence at Casa do Povo

In a dialogue between the past and the present, the show discusses violence against women and shows how the voice of black women has historically been silenced within an oppressive, sexist and slave-like society – and, thus, incites violence. Choreographer and performer Jaqueline Elesbão stitches an essentially visual narrative, almost wordless, which presents a series of images and historical references (symbols that determine female existence). On stage, the artist brings objects such as a Flanders mask – used during the Brazilian slavery period, to prevent slaves from eating food and drinks, and evoked in the image of Anastácia, a servant subjected to torture sessions while the device covered her mouth. . Swaying between the victim and executioner characters, Elesbão also shows religious elements and feminine clothes, such as the bra and high heels, icons of freedom and ties of the woman’s body.

This is the first work of Coletivo Ponto Art, which has focused on affirmative cultural actions since 2011. The group is formed by Nai Meneses, Anderson Gavião and Jaqueline Elesbão, creator of the project, dancer, black woman, drag king, producer and activist of feminine issues, Afrodiasporic and LGBTQI + causes. Since its debut in 2012, Between the Lines toured festivals such as Cena Brasil Internacional (RJ) and FIT – São José do Rio Preto International Theatre Festival (SP). The show’s research unfolded in other works of the group, such as the web series Vozes sem Medo and the workshop Resiliência do Corpo-História, a study of how historical social violence affects the female black body.

CRITICS

The vigour comes from the images revealing the violation and abuse of these bodies. Thus, the show features several scores whose images are so powerful that any speech would only underline what is already in place. The almost absence of words during the show also highlights the attempt to silence women over the centuries. And, mainly, of black women who, in the gender hierarchy, are the ones who most die and suffer from domestic violence.

 MICHELE ROLIM, NOW Theatre Critic

CHOREOGRAPHER AND INTERPRETER: Jaqueline Elesbão
PRODUCTION: Nai Meneses
SOUND DESIGN: Anderson Gavião
LIGHTING: Robson Poeta
COSTUMES: Luiz Santana