Artist statement
Professional actress since 1998 with a degree from ESTC-IPL, Sara has been working mainly in Theatre with several artists and directors such as João Brites, Rogério de Carvalho, Nuno Pino Custódio, João Garcia Miguel, Filipe Crawford, Olga Roriz, Miguel Moreira, Ana Nave, Tiago Vieira, among others. She has also integrated the cast of several Cinema and Television productions.
She started working regularly with Teatro o Bando in 2000 and was part of the permanent team of this structure between 2006 and 2018. During this period, she participated in the shows and activities led by this company, having worked as an actress, director, director of actors, trainer, administrative coordinator, financial coordinator and producer.
Between 2018 and 2020, she taught Dramaturgy and Performative Techniques at Escola Profissional de Artes e Ofícios do Espetáculo – Chapitô, where she also worked as Pedagogical Director. Currently, she is a trainer in the area of Public Communication and Voice Professor at ACT – Escola de Atores.
In 2020, she was responsible for the artistic direction and dramaturgy of the show “MADALENA” (co-production TNDM II, Teatro Viriato and CAOvar). In 2021, together with Carla Galvão, she directed and participated as an actress in the performance “DUAS PERSONAGENS” (from “The two-character play”), by Tennessee Williams. Still in 2021, invited by the National Theatre D. Maria II, she directed Staged Readings within the scope of the École des Maîtres project.
She was nominated for the 2018 SPA Authors Award in the category of Best Theater Actress and she is currently studying for a Masters in Theater Studies at FL-UL.
In an international context, and as a performer, she has toured in São Tomé and Príncipe, Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Holland, Hungary, Estonia, among others.
In 2015, she directed the project “CONTAR, CANTAR”, a co-production between Teatro O Bando and the baroque music ensemble SECONDA PRAT!CA, developed in France and Latvia.
“Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty there is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes–you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and unknowable, (…) It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.” (Rebecca Solnit, in “Hope in the Dark”)
In the course of my professional path, regardless of my tasks and in the most varied contexts, I came across several projects with a participatory nature. From large events/shows with the participation of dozens of non-professionals, to small projects in which a group from the local community was part of the creative process, even without being part of the show as performers.
Although until relatively recently my knowledge was mainly empirical, I have always considered that community practices, in general, and theater with the community, in particular – whether with a participatory or community nature -, are a democratic space where it’s allowed to discover, process, understand, organize and share experiences. This belief comes from a conscient conviction that art can be a way of investigation and of knowledge at the same time.
Dilemmas and questions arise when we try to understand how to implement and put these principles into practice. These are not always consistent with univocal artistic responses, with unique formats or with conclusive interpretations. But the acceptance towards this multiplicity of formats, processes and practices cannot diminish the ability to judge what can or cannot be a good practice, what is ideologically coherent, what is ethically correct or not, what is politically liberating or tending towards totalitarianism. In fact, there are few conclusions regarding these matters, just some clues on how to do better.
When I start a creation, the premise can be more or less clear, the unifying idea can be more or less defined, but the artistic and scenic solution happens, in fact and only, during the creative process. A process that lives, above all, from the encounter with the specific people who compose the team. And the reality that I have come across is that, many times, non-professionals bring “hypotheses” to the creative process that professional artists, usually more shaped within previous habits, do not put forward. This is a working method that has always interested me and which, I believe, brings an artistic added value.
Throughout my professional journey, namely in “MADALENA” project, I put into practice some of these assumptions that I believe in. It is my wish to continue to do so in future projects, in order to evolve myself through questioning and experience.