TEMPS D'IMAGES

NÓS SOMOS AS NETAS DE TODAS BRUXAS QUE VOCÊS NÃO CONSEGUIRAM QUEIMAR

Bestiário

The crowd gathers for the usual event. The figure is dragged away and the ecstatic masses hurl insults, throw objects and, in catharsis, vent their anger. The executioner does his job, the body catches fire, drowns, hangs itself, poisons itself and the audience cheers. The last woman to be sentenced for witchcraft in Europe died in 1782 in Switzerland.

Forty to fifty thousand women were killed during the witch-hunt period. Those most affected were, on the one hand, old women or widows who, without resources, resorted to begging, and, on the other, women who had daring knowledge of the female condition, such as contraceptive and abortifacient herbs, as well as peasants who were fighting for the right to their land. These women, who differed from the prevailing standard of femininity, were a threat to power and had to be annihilated.

Teresa V. Vaz

Lisbon, 1988. She has a master’s degree in cultural management from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain). She has a degree from the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema – actors branch. Between 2010 and 2012 she was in Valencia as part of the professional project Estudio del Arte para el Actor at the Laboratorio de Arte en Vivo with Dario Valtancoli. Between 2014 and 2015, as an actress, playwright and director, she developed the project Amor, Desamor, Amor: told in short stories of loneliness, presented in various unconventional spaces in the city of Lisbon. Since 2018 she has co-founded the artistic structure Bestiário with Afonso Viriato, Helena Caldeira and Miguel Ponte, where she has staged Atmavictu (2018), Homem- agem (2020), Galeria (2021) and Homo Sacer (2023) in co-production with TNDM II, and co- directed Parlamento Shakespeare (2019) and Parlamento Grimm (2020). As a creator and performer, she appeared in Umbra (2019), Lumina (2022) and Mesa (2022). Atmavictu, her second staging, was distinguished by the Comunidade Cultura e Arte blog as one of the “15 memorable moments of Theater in Lisbon in 2018” and the “20 best plays of 2018 in Portugal”. 

Bestiário
Bestiário is born from fragments, which is why it has the name of a collection. Each fragment has a story, and it is in the juxtaposition of the various narratives that we create an identity. We seek to investigate our cultural heritage by reviving biographical and popular stories.

We position ourselves in the present, choosing either to live it or to analyze it. We want to encourage the creation of authors, letting ourselves be inspired by the natural and social sciences. We believe in works of art that contaminate.

Bestiário was born in 2018 by Afonso Viriato, Helena Caldeira, Miguel Ponte and Teresa V. Vaz.