Sexual Theatre – Feminist Readings of Classics

“I would rather take a photograph than be one.” — Lee Miller

Sexual Theatre – Feminist Readings of Classics is a cooperation project between four European partners (Bosnian National Theatre, Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Theatre City Festival, Budva, Montenegro; Paul-Valéry University, Montpellier, France; and Teatro Circo de Braga, Portugal) that seeks to develop, through the creation and circulation of four theatre shows, a feminist rereading of literary classics from these four countries.

The title is based on Kate Millett’s “Sexual Politics”, one of the first and most important books to define the feminist critical approach to culture, which is used as the conceptual framework for this project.

Throughout 2024, international duos of directors and playwrights will collaborate with local casts and women’s rights organisations to create four new shows, based on four original texts, which revisit and rewrite canonical works that have contributed to sexist and heteronormative forms of representation of female figures.

In 2025, the four theatrical creations will travel in festival format through the four partner countries, with a performance scheduled in Braga in May as part of the Festival Política. The Sexual Theatre tour culminates with all the performances being made available online, as well as a printed, multilingual edition of the texts.

Júlio Cerdeira (directing) and Catia Faísco (dramaturgy) are the Portuguese artists who will be part of the European group.

The start of this project took place in March this year in Zenica, Bosnia, and provided all the project participants with an intense week of training and co-operation on Literature, Feminism and Intercultural Practices. The initial programme was attended by all the project coordinators and managers, as well as playwrights and directors invited from the four countries, with Braga represented by Francesca Rayner (trainer), cátia faísco (playwright), Júlio Cerdeira (director), Maria Inês Marques (project coordinator) and Hugo Loureiro (project manager).