I am an artist and thinker, who works as maker and educator in the performing arts. Originally from Lisbon, I live in Amsterdam.

I studied philosophy and theatre and have kept a dual path combining artistic making and research practice.

Throughout my life and work experience, I’ve been fascinated by the ways theatre and performance are used to play with our perception of reality.

On a stage, things are made appear and made present. I feel this especially when a theatre scene opens up outside of the theatre, in a public space. What is mundane and unnoticed appears anew and, with it, the possibility of changing how that place is perceived, presented and performed. The show rehearses new ways for that place to be seen, but also to be lived.

Making appear and make believe are both operations of transformation, magic tricks.

I find these operations to be poetical but also philosophical: they involve creating conditions of perception and experience, but that also implicate on how knowledge is produced and mediated, while the possibility of change is always political.

I have been experimenting with this interest in trajectories such as in my PhD research on contemporary performance where, instead of professional actors, performances are enacted by spectators, non-actors, animals or technology.

In parallel, in my recent artistic research I have been exploring forms of performing visualizations, for example, through pantomime, descriptions or afterimages. In both trajectories, I recognize the same impulse to experiment and reflect on the ways the real is shown and remade through performance.

My combined experience in theory and theatre has also led me to the field of arts education, where I share and discuss my practices, and intervene in the fields of artistic research and theatre history. I have also consulted as project mentor and assessor, and as jury in grant programs.

In these three situations — at the theatre, the lecture, or the workshop — I like to think of my practice as generally involved with creating speculative scenarios, that is, situations where alternative ways of acting are rehearsed, on the stage and in the world.