S. João with 15 absolute debuts and 18 co-productions in the season 2026-2027

ANDm press conference, the new artistic director of TNSJ, Victor Hugo Pontes, who started his duties in December 2025, highlighted the opening of the season with the show “Maíúscula”, a solo by Jacinto Lucas Pires, with production of São João, staged by Marcos Barbosa and actress Luísa Cruz, in the interpretation, which is Benedetta Croce, an actress of a certain age to whom a director proposes a project called Medea.

The play premieres on September 9th, is on display until the following day 13th, leaving on a national tour with stops in Lousã, Tavira and Bragança.

“Kung-Fu”, Dieudonné Nianguona’s autobiographical solo, in which the playwright, director and Congolese actor witnesses the theatre as combat art, with dramaturgy and staging of Renata Portas and interpretation of Diogo Tormenta, will be on stage from 17 to 19 September.

The performance “Singing of Rooster”, by the playwright, screenwriter and American actor Robert Schenkkan, who gives voice to Galo de Barcelos and puts him to fight reasons with Salazar, counting on Jorge Andrade’s direction and interpretation, is on the scene from 24 to 26 September.

The new season of the TNSJ has a program “with a healthy mixed, composite, hybrid character”, with projects that began to be discussed with Nuno Cardoso – former artistic director –, and bets and artistic choices of Victor Hugo Pontes, from which stand out the own productions with names like Tiago Guedes, Vítor Hugo Pontes, Marcos Barbosa, Inês Sincero and Tomé Nunes Pinto, Rui Paixão and Marta Pazo, central name in the contemporary Spanish artistic scene, which will stage “Auto da Barca do Inferno”, by Gil Vicente.

The director James Guedes directs the show “Anatomy of suicide”, by Alice Birch, who ends the season, and addresses three generations — mother, daughter and granddaughter — in three distinct times and spaces, but whose stories are told simultaneously, with the ghost of suicide always present.

The artistic director also highlighted the creation of the show “The Week of the Whys”, with artistic direction of the young creators Inês Sincero and Tomé Nunes Pinto. The spectacle that was thought of for childhood and youth and will transport the viewer to a school immersed in an unexpected revolt when a child refuses to eat broccoli in the cafeteria.

The program of this season is, moreover, marked by the “reinforcement of shows for childhood and youth” – “The State of the World (When Awakens)”, by Inês Barahona and Miguel Fragata, “TPC: Frei Luís de Sousaaaaa”, from Almeida Garrett and the staging of Raquel Castro, and “Rhoda-Viva (The Girl and the Circle)” – and by the “deepening of the social responsibility of the institution in achieving a gender balance between creators and the increase of female representation, with 20 women and 26 men”, among the creators of this season, adds the press dossier.

TNSJ programming also includes co-productions with new companies and artists that, for the first time, are part of TNSJ programming. At the same time, it will consolidate ties with theater companies based in the North region.

In a co-production with Lisbon's Open Theatre, the Teatro São João receives the new premiere “Caravana”, by João Luís Barreto Guimarães, with the performance of João Pedro Vaz and the interpretation of Joaquim Horta and Rita Calçada Bastos.

Gonçalo Waddington brings to São João his staging of “O Pai”, by August Strindberg, a coproduction with the São Luiz Teatro Municipal, also from Lisbon, and the Teatro Carlos Alberto gives rise to the premiere of “Festa”, a creation of the Experimental Theatre of Porto and the Brazilian theater company, with dramaturgy and staging of Marcio Abreu.

Sara Carinhas leads to the scene “People, Places and Things”, by the British playwright Duncan Macmillan, a portrait of the addition played by Benedita Pereira, debuting at the São João Theatre on 14 January, to stay on stage for ten days.

With the co-production of TNSJ and debut are also the shows “If a moment your eyes could see me”, by Luís Mestre, and “Smoker”, by the director, playwright and actor Tiago Correia.

The dance was not forgotten and the TNSJ takes the stage “The Silence Belongs to us” [provisional title], by Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz, “The power was not to be this (but turned out to be)” (provisional title), with choreography by São Castro, “Asymmetric”, with choreography and direction by Beatriz Valentine, and “The whole world waiting”, by choreographer and dancer Olga Roriz.

The “signs of renewal in this programming” will become “more readable when the programming of the whole year of 2027 is known”, added TNSJ’s Chairman of Board of Directors, Pedro Sobrado.

“ By the end of 2027, we will see the deepening of TNSJ’s vocation as a producer — and being a producer is to be an author and, especially in the context of its own production, this kind of impertinence or impasse that consists in continuing to set in motion the old and fascinating carousel of the cultural memory of humanity, the repertoire”.

The TNSJ surpassed the barrier of the “100,000 viewers and beneficiaries” in 2025, “increased 43% of the box office revenue, compared to 2024, and 36%, compared to 2023”, and the increase in audiences had consequences at the level of the room’s filling of 85%, today announced Pedro Sobrado, chairman of the Board of Directors, at the press conference to reveal the programming of a whole year of shows.