Five months after winning the public tender and taking over the direction of the cultural project 23 Milhas, in Ílhavo, to replace Luís Ferreira, professor, director and playwright Jorge Louraço Figueira is now artistic director of Teatro Municipal Constantino Nery, in Matosinhos
Photo: Câmara Municipal de Ílhavo
It has been eight years since the institution had an artistic director, after the departure of director Luísa Pinto, who took over the direction of the theater between 2007 and 2015.
The invitation was made by the councilman of Culture of the Matosinhos municipality to the director. Jorge Louraço Figueira knows the reality of Teatro Constantino Nery well, where he had already presented several productions, such as "Shelter for Shipwrecked" and "Titans".
The director, born in Nazaré in 1973, wrote, among others, the plays "À espera de Beckett ou quaquaquaquaqua", "Cassandra de Balaclava", "O espantalho teso" or "Xmas qd kiseres". As a university teacher, he coordinates the Post-Graduation in Dramaturgy at Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo, in Oporto, besides being resident playwright at Teatrão de Coimbra.
As he explained to JN, it was with "great joy" that Jorge Louraço Figueira received the invitation. And he explains the mission: "It's in the logic of being a director/enactor, who must present one or two of his own productions a year, a logic that is far from being just a programmer, which is very attractive", says Jorge Louraço.
For Matosinhos he intends to build a project that is "simultaneously popular - not forgetting the context in which it is inserted - and sophisticated to get to the root of the issues". To reach this goal, he explains that it is necessary "to think more about intervening gestures than about careers and to create countercurrent opportunities and long-term projects," citing the options that the mythical stage director Peter Brook took in the 1960s.
Teaching and the artistic research component will be the pillars of his intentions for Teatro Constantino Nery, where the biggest challenge he will encounter will be "to create a consistent identity for the project," he says.
The 23 Milhas cultural project still has no announced successor, but Jorge Louraço Figueira says that "the programming is all closed until the end of 2023 and with some projects for 2024".
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