A theatre project for young people between the ages of 12 and 19, PANOS - palcos novos palavras novas is once again taking place outside Lisbon this year. The city hosting the project this time around is Coimbra. Over the course of almost a year, in a process consisting of several phases, PANOS promotes and values youth theatre in Portugal and new dramaturgies, together with dozens of groups from the north to the south of the country.
In each edition, Dona Maria II National Theatre commissions three plays from leading contemporary writers, giving all the registered groups the opportunity to choose one of the texts and dialogue with its author in a two-day workshop. The groups stage the text, rehearse and present the show in their cities, towns or villages. Six creations, two for each text, are then selected by a jury for presentation at the PANOS Festival, a collective and intense celebration of the theatrical experience, which takes place over three days between 30 May and 1 June.
Actor Marco Mendonça's second creation, Reparations baby, puts the issues of historical reparations and systemic racism on the stage of a television game show. The premiere takes place at the Olga Cadaval Cultural Centre in Sintra on 7 June, followed by performances in Barcelos and Ílhavo, and then a return to Lisbon for presentations at Teatro Variedades.
But before Reparations baby!, the Variedades stage will host a dark and daring comedy based on Aristophanes. In As mulheres que celebram as tesmofórias, Odete, the creator, imagines the meeting of a group of trans women with the purpose of lynching Euripides for his treatment of them in his tragedies, establishing the Greek play as the starting point for a contemporary debate: who, after all, has freedom of expression?
In King Size, presented at Sala Estúdio Valentim de Barros, Sónia Baptista resists the pressures of binarism and questions the construction of masculinity, based on the devices used to create drag performances. In this venue, the programming continues with Corre, bebé, by Ary Zara and Gaya de Medeiros, a set of poetic reflections on the conflicts and desires of parenthood: a couple of trans people think about what it might be like to have babies in a post-apocalyptic scenario. How many people can fit into the future?
In June, Dona Maria II's programming will also take place in Pombal, with Auto das Anfitriãs, a creation by Inês Vaz and Pedro Baptista; and in Lagos, with the children's show Não se pode! Não se pode! and the Boca Aberta workshop.
Outside of Portugal, Pedro Penim's show Casa Portuguesa will be presented in Santiago de Compostela, as part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution and the transition to democracy in Portugal and Spain, mon the context of the programming season "Portugal-Spain Cross Cultural Programme - 50 years of democracy", which runs until September 2025.
Cover photo: (c) Filipe Ferreira
