Animatéria – o laboratório da matéria animada

Objects, puppets and animated forms. The starting point is our body in space, things and objects.

This workshop is a place of experimentation in which the relationship between the body and the object is worked on.

The body of the performers, actors, dancers, puppeteers, jugglers, acrobats, singers, etc. shares the stage, the studio, the rehearsal room with other bodies that besides taking up space, claim their own presence.

How do things and objects communicate amid themselves? How to devise a different co-habitation, a more interesting and equally enriching one, with these non-human presences? What kind of relationships may we imagine and build from these more or less secret forms of communication? And what would a puppet have to say about all this?

These are some of the questions that inspire this practical, speculative and experimental workshop, addressed to everyone, from performative and plastic artists to those in the intersections, and those who are curious and want to visit this universe of the poetical animation of the matter.

This activity is part of the experimental practices of the Sala d'Ensaios TdF – Teatro de ferro/Travessa da Formiga and will be continued in the following months.

Igor Gandra is a director, set designer and puppeteer.
He co-directs the Teatro de Ferro and he is also Festival Internacional de Marionetas do Porto's Director.