PRESENTATION

IN ITS EIGHTH EDITION, MITsp – São Paulo International Theatre Festival resumes its onsite activities. It is a leaner programme, but no less reactive to the urges of present time. We have left a period of pandemic constraints to regain strength and revive the power of being together. We gathered a part of the contemporary world scene, with productions going through language experimentation and showing criticism of their own time.

MITsp program brings together national and foreign works, including some original shows and a production by MITsp. MITbr - Platform Brazil continues as an important program for the internationalisation of Brazilian performing arts. Critical Regards complement the programme, inviting the audience to think about performing arts and contemporaneity with panels, articles and reviews; and the Educational Activities axis, with workshops, performances and activities bringing the debate to new pedagogies. We finally arrived in 2022, alive, vibrant and active.

MITsp PROGRAM

In this edition, we have gathered a bunch of recent productions of important names on the world scene. Franco-Moroccan Mohamed El Khatib, part of MITsp 2019 with solo Finir en Beauté, is back to the Festival, this time with Stadium, a work discussing mass behaviour through football. The social debate also outlines Hammer and Sickle, an adaptation of French director Julien Gosselin for Don DeLillo's work, an allegory critical of the excesses of capitalism. The German group Rimini Protokoll deals with our strange and familiar relation with machines in Uncanny Valley.

Argentinian Lisandro Rodríguez continues the research he began in the last Festival's edition and premieres a new work, produced by MITsp and with dramaturgy by Alexandre Dal Farra. Tragedy and Perspective I - The Pleasure of Not Agreeing is a debate about language and divergence. Also among the original works are History of the Eye - A Porn-noir Fairy Tale, in which Janaina Leite continues her theatre and pornography investigation, based on the work of Georges Bataille; Before Time Existed, a collaboration between indigenous and non-indigenous artists seeking a dialogue between the many forms of existence; and the duo for piano and performance A Garden to Educate Beasts, a collaboration between Eduardo Okamoto, Isa Kopelman, Marcelo Onofri and Daniele Sampaio.

MITbr - PLATFORM BRAZIL

Following the proposal to encompass the plurality of languages, themes and artists of the national scene, MITbr brings together, in its fourth year, works debating body and identity issues. 6

Ances, by Tieta Macau, Deferred Judgement, by Jaqueline Elasbão and Coletivo Pico Preto, and They Practice Contemporary Dance, by Leandro Souza, deal with ancestry and black people's place in society and the arts. In A.L.S.O, Jessica Teixeira investigates her body onstage, restless and shapeless. Leonarda Glück makes her Rough Lock a manifesto about Brazil and its relationship with sexuality. Cia Dita creates a political body-city in Fortaleza. And Complexo Duplo rescues the history of Latin American women in There's More Future than Past - A Docufiction Play.

CRITICAL REGARDS

The Critical Regards axis programme invites the public to think about performing arts and contemporaneity from a series of actions, such as carrying out debates; panels with thinkers of diverse backgrounds and places of speech; also publishing daily articles, interviews and reviews.

The production and contradictions of language and culture in contemporary Brazil are themes guiding this year's Aesthetic-Political Reflections, with panels and open classes taught by Nego Bispo and Denise Ferreira da Silva.

EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

Based on the theme Affectionsynthesis, the Education Activities programme seeks theatrical pedagogies questioning human supremacy in relation to other existences.

The Laboratory of Performance Pedagogy is a space devoted to the study and experimentation of the art of performance articulating theoretical studies with concrete aesthetic achievements from collectives, movements, festivals and authorial artistic works. The second edition of Pedagogies of Teatra Encounter is a space to revive theatrical creation methodologies from the disruptive experiences of nonhegemonic knowledge.

Finally, German Wolfgang Hoffmann continues his internationalisation workshop, started last year, in which he discusses strategies to global scenario occupation.

SPECIAL PROGRAMME

To fulfil the debate, the screening of the film Quem Tem Medo? [Who's Afraid?], a documentary by Dellani Lima, Henrique Zanoni, and Ricardo Alves Jr., followed by a panel with artists and members of social movements, brings debate on censorship and the rise of extremist ideologies in Brazil.