We spoke to Júlio Cerdeira, who will stage for the show performed by a Bosnian cast as part of the Sexual Theatre – Feminist Readings of Classics.
A creator and performer from Braga, Júlio graduated in 2015 in theatre from the University of Minho and in 2018 completed his research studies in the arts at ESMAE’s master’s degree in performing arts. In 2019, he co-founded BANQUETE, a structure that develops work in the field of research and creation in the performing arts. He is currently a PhD student in contemporary art at the College of Arts at the University of Coimbra. As a performer and creator, he has collaborated with Né Barros, Elisabete Magalhães, Rogério Nuno Costa, Sandro William Junqueira, Gustavo Ciríaco, Tales Frey, Festival DDD, Ballet Contemporâneo do Norte, Zet Gallery, Hosek Contemporary (Berlin), among others
The Sexual Theatre – Feminist Readings of Classics project, which is part of the Braga 25 programme, is the result of cooperation between Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France and Montenegro. It aims to develop a feminist reinterpretation of literary classics from these countries, through the creation of new shows which, during this year, will be travelling to these countries in festival format.
Braga 25 (B25) – What motivated you to take part in the Sexual Theatre project?
Júlio Cerdeira (JC) – The desire to understand how my work can contribute more directly to problematising issues such as violence against women, through an approach that encourages the creation of new dramaturgies on the subject and artistic practices of intercultural collaboration.
B25 – What do you think of the representation of women in the Portuguese literary classics?
JC – I don’t think it’s expressive enough and, when it does exist, it tends not to go beyond the social stereotypes of the historical period in question. Sometimes it’s hard to understand why there are so many authors capable of heroizing male characters and incapable of looking at women beyond a set of archetypal prejudices. Hence the priority of this work, which proposes that foreign authors create new perspectives on the way women are represented in literary classics, rethinking different historical, social, and political contexts.
B25 – How important do you think European projects like this, which seek to tackle difficult subjects through artistic and creative processes, are?
JC – These European projects seem fundamental to me because they create networks that question and problematise the different approaches to feminist politics. They create exceptional bridges that emphasise the idea that there are no right ways to be a feminist, but rather better ways for different contexts. Portugal is intersectional and co-operative, joining forces with other social minorities for faster progress in conquering women’s rights. In Bosnia, on the other hand, women’s rights movements tend to act in a more isolated way, with special attention to ethno-religiously motivated war crimes. Different political and geographical territories require different approaches to feminism. These creative processes not only inform the teams but make them share different methodologies of political action and aesthetic thinking in the process and on stage. As well as informing audiences about different socio-political realities, we are also establishing more empathetic discourses towards women and their experiences.
B25 – As an author, how present is this theme in your work?
JC – Re-signification is one of the central themes of my work, as I believe that our reading of reality is always highly conditioned by paradigmatic notions that distort our perception of the world. In my artistic work, reframing concepts and bodies is the most effective way I find to create gaps in these paradigms, questioning conservative attempts to fix gender and the body. The Sexual Theatre project is based on an awareness of the tendency for women to be under-represented in literature, and proposes the rewriting of characters and narratives, which allow us to take a critical look at works and authors that we consider to be benchmarks. Without detracting from the detailed and careful way in which Ivo Andrić writes the character Mara Milosnica, I think this new dialogue with the work is relevant, opening it up to other times, relating it to my aesthetic language, to Bosnia in the 1990s, and to contemporary post-war Bosnia.
B25 – How close is this theme to you as an artist and a queer person?
JC – As a queer artist, it’s very important for me to join the Sexual Theatre project team in combating forms of violence against women and queer people. This issue is very close to my heart, because much of the violence directed at women has a similar origin to the violence directed at queer people. It’s easy to realise that there is hatred for figures who challenge traditional conceptions of gender, who seek to redefine and re-present it, whether through women’s empowerment or by challenging the non-binarity of queer people. My work is about presenting figures of resistance and new models for living or experiencing the body.
B25 – How would you describe your experience at the various residencies you took part in in the Balkans?
JC – The first residency was characterised by culture shock. I had never been to the Balkans, and we spent five days talking exclusively about violence against women in four different countries. It was a heavy week, but one in which exceptional relationships were forged. The second week was a summer pleasure, intoxicated by clouds of hookah smoke, cafés in the streets of Sarajevo, and walks along abandoned bobsleigh tracks. It was a writing residency, where Aïcha Euzet began to draft the text and I began to create aesthetic imagery for the staging. The third residency was the largest and solely dedicated to the creative process. In this residency, we often got lost in translations, but we trusted our instincts to create a play that was a fair and dignified portrayal of the experience of Bosnian women, victims of violence in the context of war/invasion.
B25 – From the work you’ve done in the Balkans, how do you think these contexts relate to the Portuguese reality? What are the most important similarities and differences?
JC – The biggest difference is the absence of war on national territory for a very long time. Bosnia has regularly put up with wars and invasions that have left obvious marks on its population and territory (buildings, streets, minefields). One of the themes of the play ŽIVE is the systemic and regular rape of Bosnian women in rape camps by Serbian soldiers in the War of Invasion of Bosnia (1992-1995). These practices of ethnic cleansing were aimed at destabilising and disintegrating communities, as well as repopulating Bosnia with non-Muslim children, forcing captive women to terminate pregnancies of children dubbed ‘daughters of the enemy’, children who were the fruit of these mass rapes. The biggest similarity I find, which is also the subject of the play ŽIVE, is sorority. In both Portugal and Bosnia, women (family members, friends, activists, NGO workers) are the most important people in the process of women victims of violence regaining their independence and dignity. They are fundamental in this process of caring for and restructuring their lives. That’s why Aïcha Euzet wrote a play about it, about women who stretch space-time to support other women, to ensure that the victims find some light to keep them alive (žive – vivants).
B25 – What result and/or impact would you like Sexual Theatre to have?
JC – I would like for this project to be the opening of a door that will allow the city to continue this work in defence of women’s rights, through initiatives like this that reinforce the importance of artistic creation as a fundamental driving force for building a more dignified and humane project for society.
You can get to know Júlio better in the first episode of Braga 25’s videocast ‘The Place’. Watch it here.