Profile

Actor, director, playwright and producer. He began his career in the Belgian theater collective Tg STAN in 1997. He founded the company “Mundo Perfeito” with Magda Bizarro, through which he created and presented around 30 shows in more than 20 countries (2003-2014). He has taught theater at various European schools, including the contemporary dance school PARTS (Brussels), directed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the Swiss performing arts school Manufacture, the international project École des Maîtres and, in Portugal, at the University of Évora, ESMAE (Porto) and the Lisbon School of Dance. She has directed research, training and experimentation projects. Alongside his work in theater, he has written scripts for films and television series, articles, poetry and essays. Whether combining real stories with fiction, rewriting classics or adapting novels, his theater is deeply rooted in the idea of writing for and with actors, seeking the poetic transformation of reality through theatrical tools. Some of his most recognized shows are By Heart (2013), António e Cleópatra (2014), Bovary (2014) and Sopro (2017). He has maintained his collaborative streak in various projects, such as How She Dies (2019), which he wrote for tg STAN, or Please Please Please (2019), which he created with choreographers La Ribot and Mathilde Monnier. His most recent pieces are Catarina e a beleza de matar fascistas (2020), O Cerejal (2021), which premiered at the Cour d’Honneur du Palais des Papes during the Avignon Festival 2021, Coro dos Amantes (2021) or Dans la mesure de l’impossible (2022), created at the Comédie de Genève. He was Artistic Director of the D. Maria II National Theatre (2015-2021) and is Director of the Avignon Festival (2022-). He was awarded the degree of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Republic (2019). Pessoa Prize (2019) and Medal of Cultural Merit awarded by the Portuguese Government (2021).