| Objectives

What can constitute research in the domain of Theatre? Is it the production of a theoretical, historical and critical discourse? Is it the production of artistic objects in the broad domain of theatre and performance? How can we master or evaluate an object that is in constant change and inherently transient? Who are the agents that should do this research? Are we going to include the artists and their objects as specific research phenomena? What does it mean in this context the so-called concept of ‘applied research’?
Answering these questions will imply, at least, institutional, academic and professional changes; a new vision and configuration of the subject matter; a new scope of the concept of ‘research’; new curricular design for the 2nd and 3rd cycles; and the creation of research and artistic networks, that work not only as means of production and dissemination, but also as contexts of accountability for what one is doing and thinking.
If it is true that much of this is being done and thought, it is also true that in the domain of Theatre and Performance Studies the research is mainly theoretical, critical and historical and that there is a well-known gap between processes of creation and the artistic contexts, on one hand, and academic thought, mainly, on aesthetics and poetics, on the other.
How can we fill in this gap? There are concepts, actions and procedures that indicate possible ways of doing it: All that is being done by performance studies that encompasses a huge field of thought, social and professional practices, as well as different agents; the kind of work that is emerging from the use and mastering of the new technologies and multimedia processes and platforms, that imply the share of knowledge and practice; the increasing relevance of Dramaturgy, as an interpretative mediation between practice and theory in the domain of arts; the pressure of new standards of teaching arts in general and the theatre, in particular, and of the configuration of its agents and objects; and finally the overwhelming critical relation of contemporary art with questions of identity (personal, gender, social, cultural), including the identity of art itself.

| Researchers

Coordinator:
David João Neves Antunes

Integrated:
António Manuel da Costa Guedes Branco
Armando Rodrigues do Nascimento Correia Rosa
Graça Correa
João Paulo Águas Tomé Ferreira dos Santos
José Paulo de Lemos e Melo Cruz Pereira
Luísa Augusta Monteiro Araújo de Sá
Maria Eugénia Miranda Afonso Vasques


Collaborators:
Aida Alexandra Cesário Mascarenhas
Ana Cristina Nunes Pais
Ana Rodrigues
Anabela Custódio Afonso
Antonio Iglesias Mira
Carlos Jorge Pessoa Ribeiro
Ciro Aprea
Fátima Rita Prazeres Vargas
Fernando Jorge de Oliveira Jacinto da Silva Cabral
Francisco D´Orey Salgado
Hugo José Diogo Sancho
Jean Paul Bucchieri
João Miguel Osório de Castro Garcia dos Santos
Joao Tiago Pires Filipe Carrolo
José Pedro Micael Franco Caiado
Márcio Hugo Rodrigues Guerra
Maria Ana da Fonseca Ataíde Castel-Branco Tamen
Maria da Conceição Pitta Azinhais Mendes
Maria Forjaz de Sampaio Sequeira Mendes
Maria Vitória Viegas Horta
Nuno Miguel Almeida de Sampaio e Melo Rapazote
Nuno Miguel Bandeira Murta
Nuno Ricou Salgado
Rui Manuel Martinho Fernandes Mimoso
Rui Manuel Pina Coelho
Rui Miguel Sanches Linhares de Andrade
Sandra Isabel Vieira Garrochinho Terra
Sandra Mónica Alves Rios
Sónia Isabel de Brito Esteves
Stephan Jurgens
Tânia Sofia Guerreiro da Silva
Teresa Cristina da Conceição Leandro André


Research grant holders:
Mara Barth

Projects | Languages of Directing and Acting

Different Directing and Acting languages and vocabulary of Portuguese contemporary productions will be researched, treated, and analysed, to establish links between this activity and those in international contexts, and to integrate the results into advanced curricula (MA and PhD degrees).

Objectives
To research and analyse the different directing and acting languages and vocabulary of Portuguese contemporary productions;
To establish links between the results of this research and the same theoretical and practical work in international contexts;
To integrate MA projects in the domain of these objectives.

Coordinator
David Antunes

Research team

Projects | Scene & Text

As texts are fundamental for dramaturgy and direction, this project is characterized by translating and editing contemporary texts in an academic context and in independent institutions which create and produce the objects studied.

Objectives


Coordinator


Research team

Projects | Serious Amateurs Strategy

An amateur theatre group will try to understand how they can incorporate methods and principles created for professional groups without generating significant swerves. They will play Beckett’s short plays in audiovisual and theatrical contexts to understand the differences between the two forms of representation. In the first phase (2009-2010), this project will observe working sessions where this particular group of actors researches, in practice, the issues arising from the application of such methods and principles. In the second phase (2011-2012), the aesthetical choices made by the group will be put to practice with the performance of two plays by Samuel Beckett, Not I (1972) and What Where (1983), both for theatre and audiovisual media.

Objectives
Analyse the transcreation of artistic texts in different media and discuss the relation between theory and practice in a performance context.
Discuss, in an aesthetical point of view, the author's own mise-en-scène instructions (directions) and its applicability in both theatre and audiovisual productions.
Compare actors' creative strategies in both media (theatre and audiovisual) in the context of theatre literacy practice.

Coordinator
António Branco

Research team
Gabriela Borges
Theatre group "A Peste"

Projects | History of Theatre School/Conservatório Nacional

To pursue the research on Portuguese private (Dr. Ivo Cruz) and public archives (Education and Foreign Affairs Ministeries, National Library, National Theatre and Theatre Museum). Research carried out will be integrated in the Seminars of the MA Programme (ESTC).

Objectives


Coordinator
Eugenia Vasques

Research team

Projects | The Permanent Actor: the character as a flux of change

An observatory of de-construction and re-construction processes of the ‘character’ in the 21st Century. This is a research project led by Eugénia Vasques (CIAC) and Ana Tamen (CHAIA, Évora University), which will focus on the work developed by two great masters of the Russian and American avant-garde of the 20th century, Polina Klimovistkaya and Lee Breuer, and will engage – through practical workshops and theoretical publications – in building a vision for the actor of the 21st century

Objectives


Coordinator
Eugenia Vasques

Research team

Projects | Cross Media, Mixed Media in NIT and Performative Arts

To develop a multimedia platform in which art, communication and technology dialogues and provide the results of Ciac’s projects of both research groups. This platform must work not only as an information archive, but also as trigger in the creation of new artistic and communicational languages.

Objectives
This project has been inscribed among the general objectives of CIAC, that is:

To conduct applied research in artistic creation and teaching labs in the fields of Theatre, Film and other Arts, establishing meaningful links between theoretical research and creative processes.
To develop applied research in the field of new technologies and new modes of expressions associated to them, establishing links amongst media, theoretical reflection about Arts and Media, and practices associated to both. To investigate material, virtual, technological resources of artistic phenomena and the media, including the creation of databases related to the objects of theoretical and applied research.

Coordinator
Gabriela Borges

Research team
All Ciac’s members

Projects | Mediterranean Thesaurus of Fictional Narratives

To expand the web of Research Centers/Universities of the Mediterranean Area, which propose to work for the common Thesaurus and its presence in contemporary film, theatre and performing arts.

Objectives
ESTC and UALG based, this research project will start to build a source’s thesaurus of texts of the Mediterranean area (traditional tales, legends, poetry, classical, modern and contemporary literature, others) that have been or are being used in contemporary film, theatrical and performing arts, videoart or cross-media objects.
  This project has been inscribed among the general objectives of CIAC, that is, to develop research networks within institutions (universities, research centers, labs, etc.) in the Mediterranean area, with the purpose of identifying, collecting and analysing common roots and cultural narrative sources in distinct artistic creative processes (Theatre, Film, Literature and Performing Arts).

Coordinator
João Maria Mendes

Research team
Luís Falcão
Vítor Reia Baptista

Projects | ALGARTE

To build a multimedia digital platform to disseminate data about the history and the state of the art, artists and groups of artists in the Algarve during the 20th century. This project has won the Ceratonia Award in 2008.

Objectives
To identify and catalogue artists and groups of artists who have lived in the Algarve during the 20th century.
To contribute for dissemination of the history of artistic creation in the Algarve region during the 20th century and also to promote the education of different targets.
To offer workshops to professionals in the areas of tourism, arts and communication with the data collected during the research in hotels, schools, cultural and artistic centres in the Algarve region

Coordinator
Mirian Tavares

Research team
Bruno Silva
Gabriela Borges

Research grant holders
Pedro Leal Filipe