The Porto Municipal Theatre will receive between September and December, at Rivoli and Campo Alegre, a total of 11 absolute premieres, 11 national premieres, eight co-productions and five co-presentations, also proposing free access programming, was announced today.
© Wikimedia Commons
16/07/2026
by
Lusa
The American performer Mindy Seu, the Argentinean Luciana Acuña & Alejo Moguillansky, the Colombian Luisa Fernanda Alfonso (both integrated into the Make Trouble cycle) and the Portuguese Mariana Leite Soares, Isabél Zuaaa and the Portuense Rota-rota collective (by Sofia Bodas de Carvalho) are among the names of the new season, as well as the Palestinians Bashar Murkus & Khulood Basel/ Khashabi Theatre and the Lebanese Ali Chahrour.
“The Municipal Theatre of Porto (TMP) goes to baths in summer, but will not return lazy. Promises a hot autumn, promises an intense autumn, a hot return between September and December. The first day will, moreover, be marked by the debut of a sexual history of the internet that promises to raise the levels of oxytocin and dopamine ", said the councilor of the Culture of Porto, Jorge Sobrado, in the presentation of the new season.
Jorge Sobrado referred to the national premiere, at the Grand Auditorium of Rivoli, on September 18, of “A Sexual History of the Internet”, an interactive lecture by artist and researcher Mindy Seu, who invites the public to read aloud, in English, a shared script that explores “the perverse origins and the less known stories of digital tools, crossing sexuality, innovation and autonomy”.
The center of Porto will also serve as a backdrop to another national premiere: “Special Effects”, by Luciana Acuña & Alejo Moguillansky, the shooting of a choreographed film in flat-sequence, in which different interpreters invent consecutive ways of dying in the face of urban architecture, under special effects such as rain, snow and colored smoke.
The September program will also include a workshop guided by Ne Barros, a tripartite concert of Slide Bons Symbiosis, a Portuguese trombone ensemble, to see on the balconies of the Rivoli, and the Unsafe Space Garden concert, a musical collective of Guimarães that mix psychedelic rock, pop and funk to address the absurdity of adult life, in the square of D. João I.
In October, at 01 and 02, Rivoli welcomes the debut of “Zonas de Sombra”, choreographer Ne Barros, in which the movement, word and music unite to explore the psychological, metaphysical and invisible aspects of the shadow through bodies that hide deep senses.
On October 17, the literary cycle Quintas de Leitura returns to Teatro Campo Alegre under the theme “In your hands begins the cliff.”.
At 23 and 24, the Make Trouble cycle proposes two premieres: “Absolute”, by Mariana Leite Soares, which exposes “the daily consequences of the technical tuning and nomenclatures of connectors, also pointing to the conservatism and myth of superiority of classical music”, and the national debut of “Masterpiece”, by Luisa Fernanda Alfonso.
Closing this month, 29 and 30, premiere “Atlas, poetic mapping”, a creation of Joana Providence/ Teatro do Bolhão that brings together six interpreters in a choreographic manifesto that brings the experience of immigration in Portugal closer to the global poetic universe through sound, gesture and word.
On November 6th and 7th, Rivoli receives Isabél Zuaa with “Afro Sal.Oyá”, a “concerpt-pop-ritualistic show” that follows the process of creating an album by an artist ‘afro-saloia’ who grew up on the outskirts of Lisbon.
At Campo Alegre, there is a Greenhouse Show with three distinct creations: “Nocaute”, by Inês Pinho, “Equilibrios”, by Pedro Matias, and “Albatross”, by Vasco Gomes.
On 13 and 14 November, Rivoli presents the national debut of "Dzudza", by Idio Chichava (in co-presentation with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation). It is a dance that celebrates life and resistance in the outskirts of Maputo, uniting popular songs and the symbolism of capulana.
On the same dates, it premieres in Campo Alegre “#We are not cactus#”, the Teatro de Marionetas do Porto & Joana Magalhães, and on November 19, the emerging project portuense boca-rota, created by Sofia Bodas de Carvalho and José Costa, merging guitars, bass, percussion and experimental poetry.
On 20 and 21 November, Rivoli hosts the national premiere of “The Brotherhood” by Carolina Bianchi Y Cara de Cavalo, co-presented by Culturgest.
On 27 and 28, the cycle Unstable Stages returns to Campo Alegre with “Manual de Defesa”, by Júlio Cerdeira, and “Mechita”, by Sol Garcia, and on 28 and 29, the national premiere of “A Epopeia de Bani Hilal”, by Khashabi Theatre (co-hosted with the Theater of Bairro Alto and the National Theatre D. Maria II).
Bashar Murkus' performance celebrates musically and visually a legendary 14th-century Arabic oral saga about the migration of the Bani Hilal tribe.
December begins at Rivoli with “L’amour du risque”, from Compagnie Bakélite, a balloon for robot vacuum cleaners managed by artificial intelligence that turns a romantic dinner into a chaotic and hypnotic spectacle.
At Campo Alegre, Ali Charour presents “When I Saw the Sea” (cohosted with the Alkantara festival), a play in which three women give voice to the stories and nightmares of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon under the Kafala system.
From December 10 to 12, Rivoli premieres “Icaria, Icuria, Icuria: A conference on a desire called utopia and other superpowers”, by Rui Pina Coelho/ Experimental Theatre of Porto, which takes as its starting point the utopian novel by ?tienne Cabet, to question the role of politics in the face of the environmental collapse of capitalism.
Tickets for the shows of this season will be available from 16 July, in the ticket offices of Teatro Rivoli and Teatro Campo Alegre, and ‘online’ in tmp.bol. pt.
In the presentation of the new season were the current director of the TMP, Drew klein (what duty? to cease functions in December), and the councilor of Culture of the House of Porto, Jorge Sobrado.