Other Activities

Communitarian intercourses
The familiarity of Teatro Regional da Serra do Montemuro with its community in the small village of Campo Benfeito has always been continuous and narrow. Nowadays the company spends so many time in national and international tours, outside the birthplace. However, the communitarian intercourses are a tradition that we don´t discard.

The banquet is a mountainous evening party, which is open to the whole village and to any person who is there that day. People meet in the old headquarters of Associação Cultural, Desportiva e Recreativa do Fôjo, a small house in the centre of Campo Benfeito. Everyone brings something to eat and comes together to the table. The night always ends with a real banquet.

There is a main activity. Lately these activities have included little theatre plays (Tia Miséria – O Bando Theatre), the songs of Cancioneiro de Campo Benfeito, story tellers (António Fontinha), video projections (Alminhas – a documentary by Marco Miranda), nights of traditional games, small talks, etc.

The intercourses aim to fight against the isolation and loneliness and to promote the union between the village inhabitants and their friends, mainly in the rough Winter monthes. For TRSM this means going back to the roots and to the basic principles. The first intercourse happened in 1990. Nowadays they always occur twice or three times a year, with an irregular programming, according to people´s wishes.

Urban Girls and Rural Boys – Laboratory with Foursight Theatre (England)
The first meeting between Teatro Regional da Serra do Montemuro and Foursight Theatre Company from Wolverhampton (England) happened in September 2003.
At first sight, the two companies have nothing in common, but during a week they exchanged experiences, taught each other exercises and songs and told stories together.
As a matter of fact, we found out that despite Foursight is an almost exclusively female company and TRSM is an almost exclusively male company, the first one is an urban company and the second one is a rural company, one is English and the other one is Portuguese, these dissimilarities made the meetings particularly interesting. We found great institutional affinities and great complicities between our actors.
This experience reocurred in May 2004, with a second week of workshops, under the leadership of Deborah Barnard, artistic director of Ludus Dance, from Lancaster- England. This week resulted in the wish to continue this process of individual and collective enrichment, away from the pressure of creating performances. One day we may perform an exhibition together. All the conditions are ready to do it, but we want to develop and strenghten a healthy and beneficial relationship for both companies.


Work with educational institutions
 Since the beginning of its activity, Teatro Regional da Serra do Montemuro has developed two kinds of work with schools at all teaching levels.
Performances for general public exhibited to the scholar public.
Ateliers-performances specifically conceived for a determined age grouping.
A) Between 1999 and 2003 we developed a narrow cooperation with Governo Civil de Viseu, in order to take the exhibitions to schools, and we ended with a tour around the twenty-four municipalities of the district. In each municipality we performed an exhibition for the general public and another for the scholar public.
There are some basic principles to perform in the schools we practice:
1.The play is performed integrally. We never do any kind of “adaptation” to the text or to the action. We consider that this is condescending towards the young spectators. Whenever it is opportune, we do a small introduction or contextualization before the exhibition.
2.The performance is exhibited for an audience with not more than two hundred pupils, accompanied by an adequate number of teachers. We consider that quality is more important than quantity. Often these kinds of performances are a pupil´s first contact with the theatre and an unsatisfactory visibility, audition or concentration may harm seriously this relationship.
3.The performance is always followed by an action of reflection and analysis with the pupils. This action may have one or more than one of these shapes:
Structured talk between the actors, stage managers, pupils and teachers.
Quiz delivered to the teachers and filled by every pupil.
Pedagogical file with suggestions of activities to be developed with the pupils about the performance topics. (see annex file Os Gregos).
Drama workshop where the pupils themselves explore the performance topics through games, exercises and small presentations.
We try to create a cosy but concentrated atmosphere when we perform exhibitions in the schools accomodations or when the schools visit Espaço Montemuro. Our purpose is to stimulate the pleasure for theatre and the pupil´s critical sense and to demystify the arts.
Four years later Teatro Regional da Serra do Montemuro started to invite schools in the district of Viseu to visit Espaço Montemuro, and watch a theatre show, talk with the actors and sometimes take part in a workshop. Many of these schools take the chance to do a picnic, to visit As Capuchinhas – Cooperativa de Confecção e Venda Vestuário Artesanal, also in Campo Benfeito, turning this day into a real Study journey.
In the 2005-8 period we are going to develop this area of our work, by exhibiting every performance at least five times to the scholar public in Espaço Montemuro. The young spectators will pay an unexpensive two euros ticket. We consider that the spectators of tomorrow are educated to be aware that we must pay for culture. We let the responsible teachers decide about the pupils who can´t afford this ticket and should get a free one. The autarchies usually provide the transports by bus.
B) Performances like A Donzela do Milho, Os Gregos and Vasco na Cama are an example of a working area where Teatro do Montemuro has been truly innovative. The recipe is easy: we add a topic that is straight connected with a curricular area (the Environment, the Ancient Greece or the Discoveries, for instance). It must be a captivating story with captivating characters, in a theatrical and special environment, but that also allows and stimulates the talk, the discussion and the participation of spectators. Otherwise, how could we explore Antígone and the principles of democracy and justice with twelve year old children like we do in Os Gregos? How could we explore the pros and cons, the risks and pontentialities of travelling, the racism, the principles of economy, illness and death in Vasco na Cama?
In the 2005-8 programme, the performances Mãos Grandes and Da minha Vista Ponto will further develop these principles and these techniques, which result from many years of experience.
In this kind of theatrical experience the young spectator cannot restrain to watching a play on a stage. He is compelled to think, to state an opinion and express it through words, actions, images or sounds. All this happens under the protection of a dramatic structure that is created very carefully and that gradually “seduces” the participation of the young spectator.
The greatest lesson of all is that to live we must be present and active in our own life, not just watch it.