In the present, we travel to the past to plan for the future.
Marionetas do Porto delved into the universe of the company’s founder, João Paulo Seara Cardoso, and created a show from his dormant archive, recovering puppets, materials, ideas and concepts, taking advantage of the timelessness and transmutation of puppets. Armazém 88 is an ethereal place that reflects on the speed of time, the volatility of things, massification, isolation and how our emotions survive in this urban world.
The Porto Puppet Theatre is celebrating its 37th anniversary this year. In 2023, to celebrate its 35th anniversary, the company premiered this show, ‘which looks at our founder’s reflections in communion with our own. This is our celebration, our tribute’. – Marionetas do Porto
Centred on João Paulo Seara Cardoso’s staging, Marionetas do Porto performed an autoscopy of the company’s work between 1993 and 2010, and FIMFA joins in this tribute.
“It is this strange resonance between theatre and life that we obsessively seek.”
– João Paulo Seara Cardoso, 2001
“After an in-depth analysis of documents, video recordings, writings, interviews, books, objects, plants (…) we realised that the director’s focus, present in some shows, would be to reflect on a post-modern world, characterised by massification, isolation, loss of identity and how our emotions and senses survive in this urban world (…). Rather than taking stock of the company’s most emblematic plays, Armazém 88 sets out to reflect on the same subjects, with the premise of extracting music, texts, puppets, costumes, scenes and movements from shows directed by João Paulo Seara Cardoso, recreating them in our bodies, with our own perspectives and desires.” – Micaela Soares
“With a sense of spectacle that runs throughout the work, with a very refined scenic rigour and well-crafted movements, the company has brought back to life the creations of the director and puppeteer who died 13 years ago.”
– Catarina Ferreira, Jornal de Notícias
BIO
Teatro de Marionetas do Porto was founded in September 1988, a symbolic date that coincides with the company’s presentation at the Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes de Charleville-Mézières.
The company’s theatrical practice reveals an unconventional vision of the puppet, a concept that is continually updated, and an understanding of puppet theatre as a poetic and imagistic language that evokes contemporaneity. The aim is to find new ways of conceiving puppets, at the limit kinetic objects, and new possibilities for exploring the grammar of this theatrical language, in terms of interpretation and the cross-cutting relationship with other areas of expression such as dance, visual arts, music and image.
In the year it celebrated its 25th anniversary (2013), the Porto Puppet Theatre realised the great dream of its founder João Paulo Seara Cardoso (1956-2010), the opening of the Porto Puppet Museum.
In addition to the shows, its main activity, the company creates a wide range of projects, from workshops to staged readings and various exhibitions, thus developing a strong connection with the community and the public. These activities are presented in the city of Porto, in its various venues, the Belomonte Theatre, the Puppet Museum and the Puppet Pole/Bonjóia, as well as in an intense touring activity in Portugal and abroad.
The Porto Puppet Theatre received the Henrique Delgado Cultural Merit Award in 2024.
