{"id":44137,"date":"2019-01-26T13:14:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T16:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=44137"},"modified":"2019-06-12T17:46:10","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T20:46:10","slug":"teatre-se-theater-and-young-womens-leadership-in-cantagalo-and-pavao-pavaozinho-sustainablefavelanetwork-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=44137","title":{"rendered":"Teatre-Se: Young Women in Theater and Leadership in the PPG Favelas [PROFILE] #SustainableFavelaNetwork"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique\u00a0aqui\u00a0para Portugu\u00eas<\/a><\/em><\/a><\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Initiative<\/strong><\/span>: Teatre-se: Theater and Young Women’s Leadership in Cantagalo and Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho
\nContact<\/span><\/strong>: Facebook<\/a> | Email<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong>Year Founded<\/span><\/strong>: 2014
\nCommunity<\/span><\/strong>: Cantagalo and Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho (known collectively as PPG) (South Zone)
\nMission<\/span><\/strong>: Teatre-se is a group that advances conversation and action around issues facing young women in the favelas of Cantagalo and Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho through theater and art.
\nPublic Events<\/span><\/strong>:\u00a0The group regularly\u00a0presents\u00a0theatrical productions and organizes community impact projects for the youth of Cantagalo and Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho and throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro. Check out their Facebook page for more information.
\nHow to Contribute<\/span><\/strong>: Teatre-se is seeking funding to maintain instructors (who currently work as volunteers), provide transportation to cultural events in the city, and support the group’s theatrical productions.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Teatre-se was founded in the favelas of Cantagalo<\/a> and Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho<\/a>, in Rio de Janeiro’s South Zone<\/a>, in early 2014 by Tatiana Bastos de Sousa. After working in the community for nearly three years as part of a government program that placed public servants working in the area of human rights in favelas with active Pacifying Police Units<\/a> (UPPs), Bastos had become acutely aware of the significant shortcomings with regard to recreational activities and access to cultural opportunities in Cantagalo and Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho\u2014specifically, opportunities for young women.<\/p>\n

Stemming from her interactions with youth through her human rights work, it was clear to Bastos that young women in the community were in dire need of a space in which they could process everyday adversities\u2014from socioeconomic disparities and police violence<\/a> to racism<\/a> and sexism. Through her training in drama and prior participation in the theater group N\u00f3s do Morro<\/a> in the favela of Vidigal<\/a>, and through conversations with youth in the community, Bastos recognized that she had one possible solution in her hands: theater. \u201cI realized that I had this tool capable of mobilizing these girls and bringing them into a safe space, in which they could participate in dialogue and elaborate on these issues.\u201d Within weeks, Bastos began hosting acting lessons and conversation circles in an abandoned classroom in Cantagalo.<\/p>\n

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From the beginning, the initiative’s trajectory has been driven by its young female participants. While Bastos served as the initial organizer, the objective was always for students to be responsible for deciding on discussion circle topics and scriptwriting. These types of open conversations and creative opportunities provided a structure for group members to begin to trust one another and open up in new ways. The process was one that required patience, Bastos recalls. \u201cIn a racist and patriarchal society, youth unable to express themselves easily. You have to win their trust. It took time, but in the end, we succeeded at stimulating debate.”<\/p>\n

Facilitating discussions focused on women\u2019s issues in the favela and experimenting with acting proved to be transformative for many of the girls\u2014but Teatre-se’s vision extended beyond the walls of the classroom. Bastos felt that there was potential for the group\u2019s work to impact a much larger audience. \u201cWe work with issues that are pertinent to the world of young women from the periphery, but we knew that this project had to reverberate throughout the entire favela.\u201d Teatre-se\u2019s debut piece was a history and celebration of the favelas of Cantagalo and Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho and of women who have been critical to building and advocating on behalf of their communities.<\/p>\n

For the girls, recognizing the incredible amount of drive and depth of leadership embodied by these women was a huge inspiration. After hosting conversations with these female community leaders, Teatre-se recreated the scenes in which these women had responded to the favela’s needs. Despite being their first piece as a group, the performance was a tremendous success.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Starting in 2015 the need to grow actions that would have territory-wide impacts, and of a transformation in communicating with local youth, emerged from within the group. It was then that Teatre-se started to organize community-based events relevant to youth from the peripheries. Since then, the group has hosted \u201cGet Serious: An Event to Debate School Truancy\u201d and in 2017, the festival \u201cFavela Woman: Feminism and Black Favela Culture<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The one-day festival was dedicated to the following themes: women in politics, women in religion, and successful feminists on the Internet. The group held a series of discussions with female politicians from various favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Afro-Brazilian and\u00a0evangelical religious leaders, and feminists who are well-known on the Internet. Between these dialogues, the group continued coordinating theater and passinho<\/a><\/em> dance performances to entertain festival attendees.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Following the festival’s success, Teatre-se went on a short hiatus. Beyond needing to take a break after more than three months of organizing and promoting the festival, the group was awaiting classroom renovations.\u00a0Construction of the new classroom was completed in early March 2018, but before the group was able to reconvene, the harsh reality of violence\u00a0hit close to home when one of the girls’ classmates was killed in a drive-by shooting.<\/p>\n

Today, Bastos and the young women of Teatre-se remain committed to the project. Addressing the everyday physical and moral constraints and forms of harassment suffered by women and girls, the group performed an evocative and empowering piece titled “Us, Seed”<\/a> at the Virada Sustent\u00e1vel (“Sustainable Turn”) festival in June 2018. Following the performance, the group published the following note on Facebook<\/a>: “Stay tuned for our schedule of upcoming performances. ‘Us, Seed’ is coming back bigger and stronger with a new cast member, more poetry, more music, more reflection, and a lot more emotion.”<\/p>\n

For many, Teatre-se is the only place where they can process their experiences and fully express themselves. For Bastos, theater is a tool to defend these girls and prepare them for the future. \u201cThe weapon that we have to fight this ideology\u2014of youth as the enemy of society\u2014is art. And this is the weapon that we are going to use.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

*Teatre-se is one of\u00a0over 100 community projects mapped<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Catalytic Communities<\/a>\u00a0(CatComm), the organization that publishes\u00a0RioOnWatch<\/em>, as part of our parallel \u2018Sustainable Favela Network<\/a>‘\u00a0program launched in 2017 to recognize, support, strengthen, and expand on the\u00a0sustainable qualities and community movements inherent to<\/a>\u00a0Rio de Janeiro\u2019s favela communities. Check out\u00a0all the profiles of mapped projects here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique\u00a0aqui\u00a0para Portugu\u00eas Initiative: Teatre-se: Theater and Young Women’s Leadership in Cantagalo and Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho Contact: Facebook | Email Year Founded: 2014 Community: Cantagalo and Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho (known collectively as PPG) (South Zone) Mission: Teatre-se is a group […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":44288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1268,1271,1284,1503,329,452,1329],"tags":[662,396,112,258,1974,221,459,15,1472,155,270,1403,2124,319,259],"writer":[2683],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-favelaculture","8":"category-favelaqualities","9":"category-interviews-profiles","10":"category-opportunities-to-support-favelas","11":"category-solutions","12":"category-rio20","13":"category-by-international-observers","14":"tag-afro-brazilian-culture","15":"tag-art","16":"tag-cantagalo","17":"tag-community-solution","18":"tag-creativity","19":"tag-favela-culture","20":"tag-feminism","21":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","22":"tag-passinho","23":"tag-pavao-pavaozinho","24":"tag-resistance","25":"tag-solution","26":"tag-sustainable-favela-network","27":"tag-theatre","28":"tag-youth","29":"writer-shawn-provost"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44137"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=44137"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=44137"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=44137"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=44137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}