Umana
COMPANY Maria d'Alegria
CREATION AND INTERPRETATION
Maria Simões
FROM Portugal
GUIDED BY Angi Amaya . OUTSIDE LOOK Mireia Miracle and Célia Ruiz . CLOWN TRAINING Gorka Ganso, Cecília Paganini, Tom Ross . DANCE TRAINING Sara Afonso (contemporary) and Rob Hull (wave dance) . SCENOGRAPHY Marta Fernandes da Silva and Maria Simões . COSTUMES Sandra Botelho . PROPS Marta Fernandes da Silva (crown and throne) . MUSIC Teresa Gentil . PHOTOGRAPHY STAGES Sofia, José A. Carvalho, Pedro Silva, Paulo Gouveia, Mireia Miracle, Estela Alvarez . SCENE PHOTOGRAPHY Estela Álvarez (2021) and Veronica Pintiado (premiere) . TECHNICAL Márcia Conceição, Francesca Cacciatore
DURATION 50 MIN.
MINIMUM AGE M/6
ABOUT THE PLAY
Umana is a journey about the passage of time, loneliness, and memories. A comic drama about aging and the will of eternal youth. Feminine, intimate, comical, and festive.
Imagine you received the invitation to the birthday party of Queen Maria! And before you know it, the days pass like a silent movie and the most incredible party of the year, in the castle, will be prepared right before your eyes!
The queen’s birthday, as if to say the clown-woman will be crowned. And, for the clown, every day is the same!... minus her birthday!
We wanted time to go backward and eternal youth to always live in us. Here a maid, there a queen, sharing interiors, we follow the chronology of an 80-year-old woman who simply does not want to grow old. An ode to life lived with humor.
PRICE 8 EUROS
DISCOUNT OF 1€ PER TICKET FOR GROUPS (4+) OR YOUTH ≤ 25 AND ELDERS ≥ 65
POP-UP TICKETS ONLY 6 EUROS!
(PRICE APPLICABLE IF YOU BUY YOUR TICKET UNTIL DEC 1st)
DEC 2nd at 6.00PM
Teatro Ribeiragrandense
Teatro Ribeiragrandense, Largo 5 de Outubro, Ribeira Grande, PT
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MARIA SIMÕES
A clown, social entrepreneur, director, actress, educator, and cultural activist, she has worked professionally, since 1994 in theater and, since 2002, as a clown (debuted at the Mindelact Festival in Cape Verde). She navigates a multidisciplinary universe with theater, clowning, spoken word, dramaturgy, cinema, dance, and music.
Planter of trees and smiles, she believes that the arts can change the world. Along with other ARTivistas, she founded Descalças Cultural Cooperative in 2006 in the Azores. In 2015 she created BOLINA - International Festival of Clowns (now in Alto Alentejo) and the International Network of Clowns and, in 2020, she founded the UPP (Union of Clowns in Portugal). In recent years, her committed artistic work has been dedicated to the exploration of a language of its own. Inspired by Charlie Chaplin and Gardi Hutter, she works, whenever possible, without words despite being seen in the urgent words of the texts she loves and says.
Her borderless artwork has been seen in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, North Macedonia, Germany, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia and Chile. Her theatrical schools were the life and the boards of the stage with CITAC, A Escola da Noite and Teatro do Morcego (Coimbra), Visões Úteis (Porto), Trigo Limpo teatro Acert (Tondela) and Teatroesfera (Massamá). She worked and received training as an actress with Duarte Morgado, José Gil, João Alvim, Paulo Lisboa, ATO - Institute of Dramatic Art, Teresa Grancho, Living Theatre (USA), Rui Pisco, Paulo Filipe Monteiro, Nuno Cardoso, José Abreu Fonseca, Pierre Voltthéz and Zanine de la (France), José Rui Martins, Pompeu José, Els Flaquibutti (Spain), Julian Boal and Ingrid Koudela (Brazil), Jouni Piekkari and Idalotta Backman (Finland), David Best (Scotland), Jonothan Neelands (United Kingdom).
In other artistic areas, she received training in Clowning, Visual Theatre, Documentary Cinema, Contemporary Dance, Tap, Cabaret, Musical Training, Vocal Expression, Flute, Street Theatre, Juggling, Mime and Object Manipulation, Puppets, Yoga, Tai Chi Chuan and Aikido, Cultural Production, Sound Design, Luminotecnia, Scenography, Paper Sculptures, Costumes, Dramaturgy and Theater History, Adufe.
As a clown she worked with Mireia Miracle (Spain), Gardi Hutter (Switzerland), Lluna Albert and Jesús Jara (Spain), Eric le Bont (Netherlands/Spain), Pepe Nuñez (Spain/Brazil), Caroline Odin (France), Fanny Giraud (France), Ramos (Spain), Celia Ruiz (Spain), among others. And, in other artistic areas, she graduated with Tiago Hespanha and Frederico Lobo, Ludger Lammers (Germany), Catarina Trota, Peter Michael Dietz (Denmark), Carolina Portugal, Marta Pazos (Galicia), Conservatory of Music of Aveiro, José Rui Martins, Cristina Lakis (Karalis), Laurent Filipe, Fran Perez (Galicia), Sílvia Oliveira, Fernando Casaca, Pedro Tochas, Vítor Valente, Delfim Miranda, Amândio Figueiredo, Lucinda Gomes, Alberto Lopes, Luis Barbeiro, Paulo Neto, Vasco Rodrigues, Pompeu José, José Geraldo, José Rosa, José Paulo Cruz, José Alberto Ferreira and Fernando de Oliveira.