©Joana Linda
I was born in 1983, Aveiro, Portugal. I’m a theatre maker and a performer based in Lisbon whose work articulates different artistic fields, such as Theatre, Performance, Installation and Video.
In 2007, I graduated as a performer and theatre maker at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (Lisbon). In 2018, I graduated at DAS Master of Theatre (DAS Graduate School, Amsterdam), with the support of Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian’s Grant.
I generate situated research processes to encounter a specific place /community / people and to allow this encounter to affect the form of the piece. Frequently, each research creates a proliferation of different artistic objects, that manifest the project in different temporalities and modalities, beyond performance: podcasts, video, text, albums.
I’m interested in creating encounters as situations in-between commonality and performativity, proposing often an invitation to participation, in order to generate a reflection about collective gestures, agency, autonomy, shared responsibility, conflict and dissent.
My work proposes participation as a fabric that is woven and negotiated with the presence of everyone, exploring different modes of engagement: by building haptic spaces, spaces that operate through touch or where different senses are translated into touch through synesthesia and metonymy; by collaborating with local communities that become performers and co-creators of the piece; by creating spaces of sharing that generate a field of relationships where the places of who does, who sees, who chooses, who thinks, and who talks are in circulation and open to questioning.
Between 2007 and 2015, I have worked mostly in partnership with the performer and theatre maker Solange Freitas. We created together the following theatre pieces: Go Tell Fire To The Mountain (2015); Ex Machina (2014); Bugs (2013); O Festim, in partnership with the performer and theatre maker Tiago Cadete (2012); Fora de Jogo (2011); Temporária(2010); Lá e Cá (2007).
As a performer, I worked with Rimini Protokoll; Ricci/Forte; El Conde de Torrefiel; Jérome Bel; Edit Kaldor; Marina Nabais; Henrique Furtado; Raquel André e Cristina Carvalhal.
In, 2018, I presented my first solo work Chego sempre atrasada aos funerais importantes, at Teatro Maria Matos (Lisbon). Between 2019 and 2020, I created Matéria, an open studio for sharing artistic practices, with monthly encounters in Lisbon. I’m currently working on the project The songs we sing against the walls we clean, in collaboration with Josefa Pereira and Aixa Figini, which is a participatory work with women.