Everything starts as expected: between friends. Two, more precisely. One day, they talked to each other and they decided to stop meeting, for example, to have a beer at the end of a day's work and, instead, create – make theatre, music or videos and present them in a show . One condition: that this show be presented on Fridays.
That's also where the name of the project comes from – Sextas à Solta. That day was over a year ago. Many shows, videos and creators – more than 50 have already participated, in some way, in the show – then the next step is the leap to the Cine-Teatro Louletano, in Loulé, as part of the Mostra de Teatro Cenários.
But starting at the beginning, it is fair to say that the culprits are (mainly) two – although the versions of who is more guilty differ: João Viegas says that Pedro Paulino is to blame. And he argues: “Not wanting to blame anyone, he is the culprit, of course. Pedro was already in theater and was one of the people who circulated around the Casa da Cultura de Loulé [CCL], and however, he came to me with the idea of creating a space where people could meet, gather, to do things, mainly theater, but not only”.
Pedro Paulino checks the information but disagrees. The culprit, he argues, is clearly João Viegas. “People talked to me and told me that the Casa da Cultura should open its doors more. I didn't understand, because I always saw the doors open for anyone who wanted to participate or do something, but after talking to so many people I started thinking about it… However, I spoke to some people and everyone said to me: 'So next week we can see that' while João turned to me and said: 'Hey man, let's go'. Therefore, João is clearly the culprit”. The damage was done – it was over a year ago. And the doors of the Casa da Cultura really opened.
And if the initial idea was just to open the doors of the Casa da Cultura to anyone who wanted to create something - or, in most cases, try to create, many for the first time, others in areas parallel to theirs -, the fact is that what it was initially just a coffee conversation, and a show (which is, in itself, a set of multidisciplinary shows) emerged, with a large part of the original content.
According to João Viegas, the blame must be much more than shared. “This is not – and never was – Pedro [Paulino] and João [Viegas]'s show. This is the show of 30 or 40 people who, over the last year, decided that time would be better spent trying to do this than anything else – and that's abdicating time to go drink drinks, go to the movies or be with the girlfriend. And the group really works as a collective: people arrive, show up and give their ideas. It's all a bit chaotic and anarchic, people come from different backgrounds and then the end result is something unpredictable”, he says.
That is, after all, the goal: to experiment. Sextas' show has already featured theater, music, video, but also an installation, for example, which was filmed and presented as a sketch.
“I usually say in relation to our shows that you never really know what's going on: the soup isn't the same every week, it's not always caldo verde…”, jokes Pedro Paulino. “What we have here is people to experiment: music people doing theatre, theater people making videos, people who write to act”, concludes João Viegas.
But how, in the end, do you manage to gather around 50 amateur people, in all, just and and only around a show? Pedro Paulino explains: “My idea was this: to bring together people from different backgrounds, different flavors, and having this space, mix them up”. After word of mouth from friends, the desire to experiment – to put the sickle in someone else's field – will have done the rest. “This is our great victory: introducing new people to the arts, to the idea that it is possible to do, that they can create. They think: 'I can have any idea and in a month this idea is on stage. This happens because they write some things at home and come here [to the Casa da Cultura] full of desire and find some crazy people here with even more desire'”, says Pedro Paulino.
In all, more than
50 people have already gone through Sextas à Solta – “30 or 40 of whom had never done a live show or even a video”, reveals Pedro Paulino.
After a year of presenting the show several times in relatively small houses (the Casa da Cultura de Loulé – which has since changed facilities – but also the Escola Secundária de Loulé, the Bar Bafo de Baco, in Loulé or Os Artistas, in Faro, with capacity around 100, 150 people), the next step is huge: on April 7th, they take to the stage of the Cine-Teatro Louletano and promise to be like themselves: music, theater, videos, poetry, dance … And talent: talent placed at the service of the love of art – because if that's not where the word “amateurism” comes from?
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