Gonçalo Guerreiro
Gonçalo Guerreiro, was born in Lisbon shortly after the carnation revolution. At the age of 24, he left Portugal and began a long journey through Europe that would eventually bring him back to the Atlantic. He currently live in the province of A Coruña, in Galicia.
He is director, set designer, actor and artistic director of the Elefante Elegante Teatro where he has created, performed and directed with María Torres close to thirty shows to date.
He completed the training course for actors at the Lisbon School of Theater and Cinema. He graduated in Movement Theater at the École Lassaad in Brussels. He went through the Royal School of Dramatic Art in Madrid as a scholarship holder from the Portuguese Ministry of Education. He studied Commedia dell’Arte with Antonio Fava in Italy and Theatre Anthropology with Eugenio Barba in Poland, Denmark and Portugal.
He worked as an actor and musician in the Portuguese companies Teatro ABC, A Barraca, Teatro da Comuna, Teatro do Montemuro and Trigo Limpo Teatro Acert. In Galicia he collaborated with the companies Galitoon and Manicómicos.
He has created and directed several shows for different companies such as Compagnie Imagerie (Belgium), Compagnie Blahblahblah (Belgium), SU.MA (Galicia), Varazim Teatro (Portugal), Compañía Exire (Galicia), Sarabela Teatro (Galicia), Teatro do Mira (Portugal), Centro Dramático Galego and ASTA, Baal17, d’Orfeu AC and Teatrão (Portugal, in co-production).
In 2021 he won the María Casares award for the best director and best show 2021 with“A lingua das bolboretas” (Sarabela Teatro).
His artistic practice is based on a strong relationship between the body, the space and the object, in which the figure-ground dialogue assumes a direct inheritance from the visual arts. The fundamental element is always a scenograhic device characterized by specific spatial references where bodies can exist and create a rigorous investigation of gestures, movements and attitudes. Thus the narrative of the physical actions varies between the abstraction of the danced movement and the construction of the theatrical plot. For Goncalo Guerreiro, the body contains in itself all the secrets and revelations of a staging that is based on the visual dynamics of the composition of the physical, pictorial, chromatic, musical and literary space.