Jorge Andrade

Country: Portugal
Centro Cultural de Belém

Biography

Jorge Andrade is an actor, director and playwright. In 2003 he founded mala voadora with José Capela, with whom he shares the artistic direction of the company. As well as being an actor, he directs the shows and has written their texts. He coordinates the programming of the company’s building on Rua do Almada, in Porto, and the series of actions the company has carried out in the municipality of Santiago do Cacém, namely Campilhas Internacional. He has been invited to: stage a show for the 50th anniversary of Gulbenkian; take part in laboratory #1 (Marseille) at Tryangle – Performing Arts Research Laboratories; stage Companhia Maior, in collaboration with Tim Etchells; and join the cast of the show Quizoola! Lisbon by Forced Entertainment. His shows have been performed in Australia, Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Brazil, Cape Verde, China, Czech Republic, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Scotland, Slovenia and the United States of America. He graduated from ESTC. He has worked with Teatro da Garagem (1993-2001), Artistas Unidos, Comuna, among others. He has worked in television (Os Boys, Glória, etc.) and cinema (Grand Tour, Technoboss, Tristeza e Alegria na Vida das Girafas, etc.). He teaches at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School.

Portfolio & Latest Theatre Performances :
https://malavoadora.pt/?lang=en
https://malavoadora.pt/category/espectaculos-en/?lang=en

THE BIRDS

Concept of the Performance :
THE BIRDS is a cover of Aristophanes’ comedy of the same name – now shorter, more concise (without references to people and events that are no longer part of our collective memory) and with humour shifted to a contemporary register. Two men leave Athens in search of a better place to live. One of the two men is called Pistetero. When he realises how birds live, he wants to live like them and convinces them to found a new city. Pistetero’s power of persuasion is remarkable. He learns to speak in rhyme (the only way birds understand him), and seduces them showing how they should have the prominence and power that does justice to their ancestral history. The birds succumb to his rhetoric to the point of taking him as a god. Being able to charm the crowds, Pistetero establishes absolute power – his own.

Artistic Statement 
At mala voadora, we like to tackle classical repertoire when we find material in it that lends itself to inventive theatre. We prefer the freedom that theatre had in the time of these ‘ancient’ authors to the sacralisation to which their texts are often subjected. As we like the musicality of birdsong, we decided to give musicality to the words that tell the story invented by Aristophanes. The birds speak in rhyme, in chorus, and their words are gradually transformed into music, until
it becomes literal and the words are played on a saxophone. This was the way we found to deal with the perversities of political rhetoric.

director’s assistant – Marta Szlasa-Rokicka

set designer’s assistant – Zofia Ratasiewicz

stage manager – Zuzanna Rucińska

Cast: Karolina Adamczyk,  Michał Czachor, Anna Ilczuk, Andrzej Kłak, Karolina Kraczkowska (guest), Julian Świeżewski.