Maria Carneiro

O Hotel Pro Forma afirma-se como uma das mais importantes companhias europeias nas artes performativas contemporâneas. É conhecida pelo seu trabalho à volta da performance visual e do teatro musical, assim como, no investimento em trabalhos de desafio da perspectiva e percepção do espectador. É distinguida pelo seu trabalho inter e transdisciplinar e de investigação nos diferentes elementos do espectáculo: texto, luz, som, espaço, dramaturgia e texto tendo uma vertente bastante colaborativa com profissionais exteriores ao núcleo da companhia. Assim, é intenção deste projecto enquadrar do trabalho da companhia no panorama teatral contemporâneo através do estudo de processos, metodologias e matérias, tentando estabelecer afinidades com outras companhias e criadores. De seguida será tido em consideração a teoria da recepção como resultado de toda uma poética da criação explorada, assim como, aspectos da fruição do espectador, como a companhia dá a ver o espectáculo em relação com as expectativas do espectador. No final é descrito o trabalho de campo (estágio) em cooperação directa com a companhia na sua sede em Copenhaga. Este trabalho acontece na primeira fase de preparação do novo espectáculo da companhia a estrear no Outono de 2013. É fundamentalmente a partir deste trabalho que se pretende fomentar uma discussão sobre uma poética do encenador e do seu respectivo posicionamento numa estética teatral.

Realizei a experiência de mobilidade Leonardo da Vinci em Copenhaga, na Dinamarca. A instituição de acolhimento escolhida foi a companhia de teatro Hotel Pro Forma. Aí desenvolvi trabalho como assistente de encenação. A mobilidade começou no dia 27 de Janeiro, e terminou no dia 13 de Julho 2014. O estágio teve lugar de dia 30 de Janeiro a 9 de Julho, ou seja 23 semanas requeridas pelo programa. O presente relatório tem como objectivos relatar e pensar criticamente a experiência Leonardo da Vinci nas suas múltiplas valências.

In 2011 Hotel Pro Forma set up the challenge to make a performance departing from a story with a narrative and psychological-based characters. The performance is then based on Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Laughter in the Dark, 1936. Nabokov wrote it having in mind to be a cinema script, full of visual descriptions, flashbacks, zoom in and out - it is indeed very cinematographic. The highly sensorial images and atmospheres combined with a beautifully mastered literary trickery appealed to Hotel Pro Forma. The performance develops itself in 3 moments. It starts in the dark in a flashback. Then comes the chronological story in the light, and it all ends in a small live concert. The simple, banal story is not at stake here, but how it unfolds on stage, regarding the complexity of the space design, light, movement and sound. In Laughter in the dark the space more than a co-player, is co-playing with the actors, the movement, the text, the light and the music. It defines the storytelling, its unfolding and it sets rules regarding the formality of the action and text delivery. This paper will identify and analyze the translation of the book into a concept, followed by the materialization of a strong, defining spatial design. The performing space design dictated the entire performance’s development in terms of staging, but also affecting the rewriting of the script and the movement of the actors. Even though there was not much detail left in the script from the novel, it is interesting to note that the complexity of staging goes back, and it is very grounded, on the book.

‘Até comprava o teu amor’ is a site-specific performance that inhabits seven rooms of an uninhabited mid 19th century grand house in Porto. The director, Joana Craveiro, assigned each room to a different actor, who then developed a devised piece on the theme of love, namely first loves and the possibility and impossibility of love. The audience is divided in seven groups and taken along seven different routes inside the palace – from the basement to the attic. Each group experiences a different dramaturgy of the performance because they go through the journey in a different order. This paper intends to understand how architecture and space influences, inspires but also restricts the dramaturgy and directing of the performance. The concept of house will be taken into account as a physical, architectural, material entity, but at the same time, as a fictional and emotional abstraction. This dichotomy will be at the heart of the argument. An extra effort will be given to the understanding of the director’s point of view and decision-making in the process, when staging and managing all creative input. In order to provide a contextual framework of this case-study the first part of the paper will look at others performances by the same company. Secondly the mentioned case study will be presented. In the end brief notes will state how a house as space and memory is regarded in this performance.

Hotel Pro Forma has been creating performances for over 30 years, from Denmark to the world. When looking at the company’s performances does one labels them as Danish, Scandinavian, as performances from the North, from one of the happiest country in the world or as performances from a country where extreme right groups are very present? How do performances convey, and survey, time, space and agendas? Looking at the company’s productions one feels an aesthetical and ethical expression, both consequences of the pulse of a society. Artistic director, Kirsten Dehlholm, comments on the subject: “I believe that I would have done something else if I was in France or Portugal. Not that what we do resembles in Scandinavia, I don't see that. But I can see our performances opposed or compared with other kind of performances in other countries.” This paper intends to look at Hotel Pro Forma’s productions and label them as performances that come from the cold. When analysing some performances and tracing some aspects of its history, there will be a dialogue between the creative process together with a sense of place: of a cultural background, material history and political participation.

This article reflects my journey as a performing arts student and intern both in Portugal and abroad. It is not intended as a personal journal, but rather a reflection and an aftermath comment on my experiences and learning processes. First it provides a context regarding my university education in a Southern European country, against a previous British background. It then describes my experiences interning in Wales and in Denmark. It deliberates on the challenges and opportunities one may find in an internship situation and what one can gain from it. I conclude with the idea of some future career paths and career development opportunities for young performing arts professionals.

Hotel Pro Forma is known as a visual theatre and a theatre of images; however it does not follow similar design processes as other companies under these labels. Taking into account what Bonnie Marranca wrote on the Theatre of Images (1977), in Hotel Pro Forma the two-dimension stage picture involves a different process than in those quoted companies. Hotel Pro Forma’s performance space is always taken into account as tree-dimensional. Concepts as scenography or scenographer are never heard or mentioned. Two-dimension objects or props are never used, because the company’s performances are about the material space they are set in and about the space they create – it is all very physical and all very abstract at the same time. Having said that there is an urge for two-dimensionality in the performing space, even in installation-performances, but the two-dimensionality is arranged departing from a three-dimensional design process and through optical illusion. Architectonic solutions are favoured over pictorial ones. This paper intends to discuss how three-dimensional design processes seem to be cancelled out, when the spectator looks at the performing space, or by the designing of flat images in the performing space.

A ideia dos primórdios de celebridade (star system) entre os actores está necessariamente aliada à produção de retratos pintados e gravados. No século XVIII no Reino Unido o negócio das estampas de teatro florescia, aliado a uma cultura da impressão que remodelou activamente a representação dos actores em palco, assim como a sua recepção por um público submerso em imagens impressas.

Nesta comunicação pretende-se reflectir sobre a pintura de retrato e o teatro a partir da estampa do actor David Garrick (1717-1779), Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy, 1762, pintada por J. Reynolds, e gravada por Edward Fisher. 

Efectivamente, o actor Garrick percebeu muito bem, e usou a seu favor, o entusiasmo do público em ler imagens nos espectáculos. Note-se que, os actores afectavam a arte e a prática de fazer retratos, porque eles criavam imagens, que por sua vez originavam retratos (Aliverti, 1997). O próprio Garrick encomendou vários retratos de si mesmo, e tratava da sua distribuição. Na sua digressão a Paris em 1764 encomendou com urgência várias estampas para distribuir a amigos e admiradores. O marketing da sua imagem traduzia-se também em objectos como: pratos de porcelana, latas de chá de prata, caixas de esmalte ou medalhões.

Assim é importante olhar o modo de produção e recepção de retratos, e perceber as suas consequências tanto na história, como na iconografia teatral. Para além de abordar a contaminação entre a pintura e o teatro, procurarei reflectir sobre a noção de retrato como interpretação de um sujeito, neste caso um actor, por um pintor seu amigo. Pois está escrito que, o pintor Reynolds prestou um encantador tributo ao seu amigo Garrick neste trabalho. Aspectos da composição e do tratamento dos temas no quadro serão tidos em consideração à luz da época.

This paper reflects my experience working as an intern at the Resource Centre of The Centre for Performance Research in Wales. I then describe how theatre images and imaginary, specially 18th century theatre prints, are important for both the documenting and understanding History, as well as, for future creative processes.

Built architecture can be experienced through many ways: through daily life, through guided visits, through audio guides, as a regular daily environment, as a pleasure visit or a compulsory visit. With this paper we aim to discuss how performance can document and provide an experience of architecture and in what way the combination of moving, changing and interacting with architectonic space can be enacted through the mediation of performance. That is, we will try to identify and document how performance be used to raise awareness about the configuration, function, history and uses of a built environment and transformation processes that can happen throughout time, or through political or social changes. Drawing from two different performance pieces: Teatro do Vestido's "SAAL Museum - Memories of the neighbors", in which a theatre troupe specialized in researching memory through space documents the history of a social neighborhood in the process of dying out, and Visões Úteis "Deep Comma", where a politically engaged theatre troupe documents the gentrification of a traditional neighborhood, we aim to document different possibilities of experiencing space and creating a dramaturgy of gesture that can underline and bring back hidden meanings and possibilities of architecture.

O FRIO determina o modo como são concebidas as casas e outras estruturas arquitectónicas, o design, os hábitos quotidianos das pessoas, a sua natureza anímica, as suas opções estéticas, as actividades culturais e artísticas, a relação com a luz ou a sua ausência.

Caso de estudo a experiência de viver na Dinamarca e trabalhar com a companhia local Hotel Pro Forma.