Asking the Question
POETIC CONSTITUTIONS: CARING EUROPE
A POETIC CONSTITUTION: Caring Europe aims to GENERATE a new performative, participatory and critical space for the European question and CREATE an artistic space for the construction of the self and its relationship with a social and relational ecology,: a kind of equidistance, solidarity, fraternity, between the different people, origins and ethnicities.
We are asking THREE relevant questions on identity/nationality/sense of HOME and BELONGING to a larger community, that of Europe
This project is based on this disease/feeling of lacking a home (homesickness), and in Portuguese we can name "Saudade". This is a force that made portuguese people go in a search overseas and now it is this same force that makes us want to discuss and reevaluate what it means being European and what kind of house does Europe represents for us, which we all feel both in need and lack of. It is a kind of paradise, or Ilha dos Amores (in Lusíadas de Luís Vaz de Camões).
Back to Ithaca.
Performing Politics
Translocal Dramaturgy
THREE playwrights,1 from Scotland, ONE from Greece and ONE for Portugal will write ONE theatre play to reflect about “nowhere is now here”— with the coaching help of experts covering areas such as: immigration or refugee reception policies, new religions, astrologers, philologists, global terrorism, fake news and political and financial marketing.
The play will be loyal to the source material, rawness of expression and musicality and the fears and hopes of the participating groups/ They will be multilingual to reflect the diversity and cultural richness of the three countries, their history and their future woven into the old European, the Mediterranean and Europe's northern corners. Performances will happen in all three countries live and digitally The performances will encompass elements of the Theatre of the Oppressed with a trained and non-trained actors as performers and members of the the Community as a Chorus element to reflect the urgency and authenticity of the discussion
Our aims
Consolidate the role of Art as a means and an end to restore and repair social trauma and conflict
Combat the temptation of neo-fascism. The capacity of neo-fascist movements have to make people feel included and remembered when they themselves feel forgotten by their governments; the illusory and attractive way of exploring demagogic and populist arguments with those who feel isolation or social insecurity
IMPACTS
Sustain the reparative practices that emerge from the theatre of cultural justice through intercultural, interreligious and translingual dialogue
The raising of European Community purpose and spirit through interaction between southern and northern epistemologies Intellectual inheritance and legacy through a Perpetual platform for cultural organisations and performers
TARGET GROUPS are any person aged 16 +with emphasis on diverse and opposing groups in terms of ideology, religion and political positioning Groups with specific pedagogic aims for ethics and reconciliatory performance
Fundada há 16 anos, em 2002, a Companhia João Garcia Miguel é uma companhia de criação artística contemporânea que pesquisa o desenvolvimento artístico e criativo em artes performativas, exploradas no teatro.
Chorus is a non-profit organisation founded to build a bridge between arts, education and society. Its mission is to promote humanitarian principles and values, to trigger public debate and mobilise the public on key social issues, to support the proactiveness of the Civil Society, as well as to foster respect for the rights of each individual through contemporary artistic creation, education and cultural activity in general.