What if theater refused to be safe?
Program
This program, What if theater refused to be safe?, is born from the necessity to reclaim theatre as a place of mutual risk, a place of collective forces—an undefined space capable of shaking existing narratives. It is an attempt to propose a collective space, one that treats sharing and the commons as “dangerous” in the face of the isolation and atomization of our times.
Program
Baque Flamingo
We begin the evening outside with Baque Flamingo, a percussion group founded in Amsterdam and dedicated to playing Maracatu de Baque Virado. Composed of members of diverse identities and backgrounds, Baque Flamingo cultivates a space of community, collectivity, and learning from Maracatu Nations, committed to supporting their ongoing manifestations and resistance. Their presence here is both a procession and a celebration of Afro-diasporic heritage.
House of Desaparecidxs - Pau(la) Chaves
A homage to the missing ones and a technology of resistance in exile. A hooded character La ChicaScratch, embarks on a transgenerational journey to uncover the hidden story of her mother as a young militant activist in 1970’s Colombia. Through it she reflects on her migrant journey and that of thousands of Colombians who fled/left their country in order to save their lives. People who had no other choice than to leave their homeland after being threatened for their political beliefs and/or sexual orientation.
Speed Up God Speed Up - Marcelo Evelin
It is a piece for 12 dancers playing as a team, exposing their singularities to a common condition of performativity. A high-speed dance of custom escape routes at an autorama. Here, collectivity does not mean homogeneity; instead, it is rooted in a shared vitality and a political stance against fascism, while still allowing a process of individuation to unfold within the group. The performers dance on and with the music of Tantão e os Fita, a Brazilian music group from the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. Tantão is a black, dissonant, and political voice.
Dinner curated by Poppy & Olive
The Price of (Un)Knowing' invites you to explore and taste the creation and commodification of codishes now commonplace to Dutch supermarkets and households, yet it's recipes and history estranged from its origin. The performative dinner provokes you to explore choices - through flavours, textures, and stories - bringing attention to who pays and who profits from reproducing recipes from Palestine.
DJ Camille Sapara Barton & workshop Simomo Bouj
Multidisciplinary artist/DJ Camille Sapara Barton also known as DJ Afro Oankali and performer/curator Simomo Bouj will invite the audience into a twirling workshop, where embodied practice replaces spectatorship, opening a temporary space of collective becoming.
Pop up Acts Taka Taka & Clara Saito
Throughout there will be music and pop-infused performances by dragtivist and art-educator Taka Taka and performer and activist Clara Saito. By combining drag, theatre, lip-sync, and audience interaction, a raw and open space emerges in which sadness can be shared, moved, and transformed.
This is not a lament, it’s the scream of the bird of prey - Francesca Lazzeri
A physical and visual soloperformance resulting from a 3 weeks long research. It attempts to deal with what’s broken, to find a new sense within a transformed landscape, if it is to be found. Not in order to fix something, but rather as a gesture of resilience, as an attempt to recalculate a direction. It’s the embodiment of a scream. A scream that we, as people and perhaps even more as women, easily unlearn how to uncompromisingly manifest. One that is regularly being killed before it manages to exit the body.
Closing Ritual - Flavia Pinheiro
We end this special evening with a closing ritual from Flavia Pinheiro. Flavia is an Amsterdam-based choreographer, educator, and researcher from Brazil. Her work explores networks of resilience and resistance to dominant systems of knowledge through fabulative speculations in interspecies choreography. She holds a Master’s degree from DAS Choreography (2022) and was part of the DAS Third research program (2022–2024) at Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK).
What if theater refused to be safe?
Flavia Pinheiro & Simomo Bouj / Frascati Producties
About the makers
Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla
Pau(la) Chaves Bonilla is a Colombian-born performance and visual artist based in the Netherlands whose research-driven practice explores social justice, decolonial legacies and resistance through ritual, performance and visual work. They are co-founder of Papaya Kuir a grassroots queer migrant collective. Their practice vindicates culture, art and somatics as technologies for collective and personal transformation.
Marcelo Evelin
Marcelo Evelin is a dancer, choreographer and researcher. He lives between Teresina and Amsterdam and works in Brazil, Japan and several European countries as an independent artist at the helm of Plataforma Demolition Incorporada, based at CAMPO, a space for residency and resistance for the performing arts in Teresina, Piauí, Brazil. His shows “Ai Ai Ai” , “Barricada” , “A Invenção da Maldade” and “Uirapuru” are currently circulating in theaters and festivals around the world.
Camille Sapara Barton
Camille Sapara Barton is a Social Imagineer, multidisciplinary artist and somatic practitioner, dedicated to co-creating networks of care and livable futures. Rooted in Black feminism, ecology and harm reduction, Camille uses creativity, alongside embodied practices, to create culture change in fields ranging from psychedelic assisted therapy to arts education.
Simomo Bouj
Dancer and curator Simomo Bouj moves, moves others, and is moved by others, in many different contexts: inside and outside, professional and non-professional. Simomo holds space and helps activate it collectively. With diverse (cultural, professional, moving) skills that find origins from Morocco to here. With a varied dance background: starting ‘on the streets’ where they danced hip-hop and at the Royal Conservatory of contemporary dance in Antwerp.
Taka Taka
Panagiotis Panagiotakopoulos (35, GR) aka Taka Taka trained as a professional make-up artist, he studied Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, followed up by the MA ArtEZ programme at the Dutch Art Institute. Taka Taka identifies as a professional dragtivist and art-educator who produces performances as director for the House of Hopelezz, Club Church, Amsterdam. Taka Taka is a sister for others, a mother of the drag king house of Løstbois and proud daughter of Jennifer Hopelezz.
Clara Saito
Clara Saito is a performance and visual artist based in Amsterdam. Her work moves between different characters, including the drag king Kurt Dickriot, the rockstar of performance art Lady Dada, and Sadsato Claclown, the saddest clown in town. These personas evolve with each performance, shaped by Saito’s lived experiences and in response to the world around them. Saito’s artistic practice is rooted in improvisation, transformation, and a refusal of fixed forms. Drawing from her plural cultural background, Brazilian, Swiss, and Japanese, as well as her long-standing involvement in Amsterdam’s queer and DIY scenes.
Francesca Lazzeri
Francesca Lazzeri (she/her) graduated in 2016 from the Mime Education in Amsterdam and has been actively working since then as a theatre maker, dramaturg, adviser, mentor, performer and teacher. Between 2015 and 2019, she was part of the performance collective Wild Vlees, afterwards she continued creating performances under her own name. Francesca distinguishes herself by her uncompromising, outspoken and direct signature. Her work is highly visual and often physically demanding. Her performances address spectators in their intimate and personal space, while often questioning and problematising how we live with each other in Western European countries. Since 2022 she is the dramaturg of Frascati.
Flavia Pinheiro
Flavia Pinheiro is an Amsterdam-based choreographer, educator, and researcher from Brazil. Her work explores networks of resilience and resistance to dominant systems of knowledge through fabulative speculations in interspecies choreography. She holds a Master’s degree from DAS Choreography (2022) and was part of the DAS Third research program (2022–2024) at Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK). Her graduation piece, 7 Abiku Solos for 11 Bacteria Falling Through, was supported by the Aart Janszen Fund and awarded the André Veltkamp Beurs Grant. In 2022, she also received the 3Package Deal fund for International Talents by AFK as part of the ‘Engaged Art’ coalition.
