Keyla Brasil was recently the protagonist of one of the most relevant actions carried out on a Portuguese stage in many years. She interrupted a theater show in one of Lisbon’s main theaters, protesting against a transfake situation that was taking place in that show, claiming dignity and equal access to professional opportunities for trans artists. With this episode, Keyla has caused a stir in the artistic community and in the Portuguese society at large that is definitely contributing to a deeper thinking about art, theater, performativity, work, discrimination, courage and life.
- O ESPAÇO DO TEMPO
A character that lives trapped in an underworld where there are no limits to reach the apex of desire, is trying to understand the relations of her body with something on the order of the divine, which insists in accusing her of blasphemy by just existing. In a growing inquiry, the artist uses immaculate objects in a particular ceremony to try and resolve the conflict of the sacred and the profane in communion.
BIO & CREDITS
KEYLA BRASIL has a degree in theater from the Federal University of Pará in 2015, and she worked for many years with marginal theater, as a way of bringing the art of dramaturgy for spaces and people who would not have such guaranteed access. Her works have been marked by the frontier fields of performing and circus arts.
Keyla also develops artistic work through the streets of Lisbon. The dialogue with random people, the exploration of the territory and the relationship of her political body with the street, all have been material for the development of this work front. Here there is also an interest in the “layer of looks”, which is the performer’s relationship with the passers-by that not only is in the domain of semiotics, but also by thinking of the environment as a propellant and co-agent of what the artist proposes.
Keyla Brasil gropes the artistic “becoming” through her political-travesti body. By misplacing glances and speeches, her corpography permeates the inventiveness of other possible existences, and how they are socially related on the borders of a territory where segregation is the order.
Organizing movements in a context of trans-artvism is where the work of the artist has been heading in recent years. Travesti, immigrant, racialized and some other identity markers are associated with her path, and it is also in the circus arts that she finds a language that serves as an apparatus for her performances.
Direction: Keyla Brasil
Interpretation: Keyla Brasil
Production: Freda Paranhos
Production Assistance: Cristiano Zillmann
Technical Direction and Light Design: Samara Azevedo
Dramaturgical Collaboration: Freda Paranhos
Rui Horta started dancing at the age of 17 at Ballet Gulbenkian. He studied, taught and performed in New York for several years. In 1990, he founded the S.O.A.P Dance Theater Frankfurt, where he created, over 7 years, six programs which toured all over the world. From 1998 to 2000 he worked in Munich, at the Muffathalle, where he created “Bones & Oceans”, “Zeitraum” and “Blindspot”. In August 2000, he returned to Portugal (Montemor-o-Novo), where he founded the multidisciplinary center for research and creation O Espaço do Tempo.
Patrícia Portela is a writer and performance maker born in 1974, living between Belgium and Portugal. She studied set and costume design in Lisbon and in Utrecht where she made her master of arts, she has studied film in Ebeltoft at the European Film College, Denmark, and has a master in Philosophy from the International Institute of Leuven, Belgium. She is a founder member of the Prado cultural association since 2003 and a curator at the collective editions Prado since 2008. Patrícia Portela writes chronicles for Jornal de Letras, Jornal do Centro and Coffeepaste. She was the Artistic Director of Teatro Viriato from March 2020 to February 2022.
