das marionette (Belgium)

ADRIANA LA SELVA – Artistic Director 

The necessity to do theatre comes not from a “who”, another person or a master, but from theatre itself. I remember very clearly the moment I decided to become an actress; it was in the middle of a (very conventional) performance I was attending when I was 15 years old with my grandmother. A week later, I signed up to a theatre school in Sao Paulo, where for three years I learned very intensively a different approach to acting every six months.

The pleasure of looking for new possibilities in this craft led me to the practice-based academic environment. At University I met the first person I could call a master, Antonio Januzeli, a person that opened up my understanding of what theatre could be and who set the ground for my meetings with other masters later on. Grupo Lume, Indian Vajra Musti master Jo Azer, the Malasian owner of a restaurant in Melbourne (one can learn much about theatre by serving dinners!), Guillermo Gomez Pena and Iben Nagel Rasmussen are milestones in my body.

As for the last question, the one I ask myself everyday, more and more theatre seems to be imperative for me because it has become an ethical attitude, a way of living and sharing life, a site of political resistance and aesthetic encounters that can be generous and kind to all levels of the communities that encircle me. I try to apply these thoughts and experiences within a theatre collective I direct, based in Ghent, Belgium, called -das marionette-.