Luanda Casella and Pablo Casella
Country: Brazil and Belgium
Company: NTGent
Biography
LUANDA CASELLA is a Brazilian theatre director based in Ghent. She is a house artist at NTGent and artist in residence at deSingel International Arts Centre.
Her work is about the deconstruction of language with a focus on ‘deceptive discourse’ in communication processes and ‘unreliable narrators’ in literature. Her pieces have been referred to as ‘awfully intelligent ’and ‘horrifically funny’.
Casella’s work has been shown at international festivals and venues such as Theater Spektakel (Zurich), Edinburgh Theatre Festival, HAU, (Berlin), Kaserne (Basel), Spielart Festival (Munich), Dublin Theatre Festival, Venice Biennale, a.o., besides being selected for the Belgian Het Theater Festival three times as best performances of the year.
Alongside her performances, Casella has a career in academia. She is currently a teacher and PhD candidate at the drama department at the KASK Conservatory, Ghent, and has also been a guest lecturer at several master programs such as DAS(Amsterdam), P.A.R.T.S (Brussels), Universität der Künste Berlin, Cité Universitaire de Paris, RUTGERS (New Jersey), o.a.
PABLO CASELLA is a composer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His ear for harmonies is unique in contemporary music. With skills and virtuosity, he knows how to paint landscapes through sound, emotions through melody, power through rhythm.
In the theatre scene he is active as a soundtrack composer, producer and live musician; he contributed to Antigone in The Amazon (Milo Rau/NTGent/MST), Ferox Tempus, KillJoy Quiz and Elektra Unbound (Luanda Casella & NTGent) and BAM!, Saperlipopette, LOS (Ultima-Thule). He is currently touring internationally with Antigone in the Amazon, having already played in ten different countries and in renowned performing arts festivals, such as Vienna Festival and Festival d’Avignon.
Pablo Casella has also been part of several music projects, playing in festivals such as Dour, Les Ardentes, Dranouter, Gent Jazz and Jazz Middelheim. With his own band, Little Dots, he’s released two albums with V2 records (2014 and 2018), to which he composed, arranged and co-produced. Little Dots was a resident group at Ancienne Belgique, Brussels. Their tours included support acts for Gabriel Rios and Hooverphonic, in venues such as AB (Brussels), De Roma (Antwerpen) and Paradiso (Amsterdam), and festivals such as Gent Jazz and Eurosonic.
Trouble Score
Concept, Direction & Performance: Luanda Casella & Pablo Casella
Directors Assistant & Choreography: Lucius Romeo-Fromm
Dramaturgy: Joline Vermeulen
Text: Luanda Casella
Music Composition: Pablo Casella
Light Design: Nick Verstand
Graphic Design: Wouter Van Nes
Voiceover: Nástio Mosquito
Production: NTGent
Coproduction: DE SINGEL
Summary:
Trouble Score is a storytelling concert about the hardship of living with trauma and an ode to the art of living.
Lifelong collaborators and siblings Luanda Casella and Pablo Casella delve into an old family scandal, a web of fragmented criminal stories. Against the backdrop of racial segregation and a military dictatorship, they become entangled in the fray of an impossible plot—one in which childhood innocence collides with the distorted reality of trauma.
With a great sense of humour and magic realism, Trouble Score captures the fantastical, mysterious and often hallucinatory nature of family dynamics.
On stage, the duo embarks on an aesthetic journey that resembles a ritual, a self-prescribed ceremony pushing the limits of personal catharsis into the universal themes of birth, trauma, revelation, exile, illness, death, and integration.
Touring dates upcoming
02.10.2025 — Trouble Score — NTGent, Ghent (World Premiere)
04.10.2025 — Trouble Score — NTGent, Ghent
05.10.2025 — Trouble Score — NTGent, Ghent
08.10.2025 — Trouble Score — NTGent, Ghent
09.10.2025 — Trouble Score — NTGent, Ghent
10.10.2025 — Trouble Score — NTGent, Ghent
11.10.2025 — Trouble Score — NTGent, Ghent
17.10.2025 — Trouble Score — DE SINGEL, Antwerpen
18.10.2025 — Trouble Score — DE SINGEL, Antwerpen
Feb. 2026 — Trouble Score — PUSH Festival, Vancouver (precise dates will be confirmed soon)
05.05.2026 — Trouble Score — KVS, Brussels
06.05.2026 — Trouble Score — KVS, Brussels
09.05.2026 — Trouble Score — Harelbeke, CC Het Spoor
01.06.2026 — Trouble Score — De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam
02.06.2026 — Trouble Score — De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam
Contacts for interests (touring etc)
General questions:
Luanda Casella, luacasella@gmail.com
Performance Bookings:
Floria Lomme, Sales & Distribution at NTGent, floria.lomme@ntgent.be
