Cia. Pessoal de Teatro

Cia. Pessoal de Teatro started its activities during a Theatrical Directing course at the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP) in Brazil, and was founded by Juliana Capilé, Tatiana Horevicht and Karla Izidro, in 2001. During the course, the group began to tour, taking part in festivals and theatre showcases throughout the country. In 2005, we moved to Cuiabá (Matto Grosso) and contributed to the founding of the Movimento de Teatro (Theatre Movement). In 2009 we created the Núcleo de Pesquisas Teatrais (Theatre Research Group). We are dedicated to teaching artists and enabling them to flourish.

Our initial impulse as a group came from our lecturers at UFOP, who followed our work and looked what we were producing at the time. The majority of these lecturers were influenced by Theatre Anthropology and were searching for a form of theatre that made sense from a humanistic rather than purely market-orientated perspective. But it was the opportunity to tour and showcase our work that really solidified our identity as a group.

I believe that Brazilian theatre practice doesn’t really encompass the notion of “a master”; traditionally we have fused a mixture of traditions in our craft and have never stuck to any one source. We are culturally mixed and possess a vast array of diferente influences. Despite this, I recognise that one of the foundations of Cia. Pessoal de Teatro was Eugenio Barba and his notion of Theatre Anthropology, because this was the main influence of our teachers. It is here that we can perhaps find a correspondence to the notion of the word “master”.

Theatre remains an imperative for our group, in spite of the ideological, financial and political crises that we are facing in Brazil, because we believe that it is through theatre that we can process what we live as human beings and produce a new world vision for ourselves. It’s the way that we have found to be in the world and to act, from our own perspective.