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The“TePI – Theater and the indigenous peoples” comes in digital platform format, bringing the importance of the indigenous artistic leading role in its expression and representativeness. Here, theater is understood in the diversity of its form and valuing the body as esthetical and political power.
The works and the actions making up the programming reflect existence beyond humanity, showing interest in people but also in trees, the air, the animal, the flower, the water, the community, the smell, the land and the ancestry.
TheTePI arises as a movement concerned with the plural biographies present in our planet! Thus the idea of a platform as an exchanging place, bringing together indigenous and non-indigenous artists and intellectuals who bring in their thought and work the reinvention of life for the common good.
he platform is thought to be a long-term project, to be continuously fed in a long-lasting way and with a periodically renewed programming, structured around five big axes
Tepifirst stepconsists of an intense launch schedule taking place each and every week, from Monday to Sunday, between November 26, 2021 and March 13, 2022.
Theater Shows, Performances, Dramatic Readings, Open Talks, Book Launch, Brochure, unpublished Dramaturgy, Internationalization program, Podcasts, Video Pills and Critical Texts will be gradually organized, throughout the months of this period.
In the programming, it’s possible to watch shows screened in sessions that could be seen on scheduled days and time. However, many artistic actions will also be permanently available at the digital platform after their launchs and could be freely accessed.
There will be 85 guests in total, including creators, researchers and intellectuals, taking part in 71 ctions involving Baniwa, Terena, Mapuche, Shipibo, Guajajara, Krenak, Tariano, Tukano, Potiguara, Pataxó, Pankararu, Guarani, Maxacali, Desana, Kamayurá, Tupinambá, Kadiwéu, Kubeo, Corezomaé and Wapichana artists.
Follow the entire programming here!
By Andreia Duarte and Ailton Krenak
We finally reached setting up TePI as a digital platform! Due to the tragic year of 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic explosion, TePI as an in-person art showcase had to be postponed, something that, facing the abyss of so many deaths, brought us many doubts on how the project could be carried out after numerous tries.
Those working with cultural actions in a country like Brazil – which has been developing historical and recent politics of cultural collapse, of indigenous peoples’ rights and of the environmental and plural denial of life – knows what the persistence of developing an event like TePI is. There’s no other word but resistance, to be said, which, in our case, is in a struggle guided by the daily routine of our lives.
It’s possible to say that, if militancy keeps us together – an indigenous leader like Ailton Krenak and a non-indigenous artist who brings the attachment to indigenous people and communities to life – we are also connected to the idea that the place of creation is far beyond that kind of art produced for the market. We believe that invention can be a powerful tool to let various worlds emerge, opening up the possibility for showing the dreams we long for while developing other times and spaces!
We’ve never thought about bringing ancient cultural expressions from the communities to insert them in a theater. Years of gatherings led us to set up the sustaining bases for this movement of aiming arrows to different directions. Weapons as theatrical creations rule out any doubt at the moment they claim: Yes, the indigenous artists demarcate our identities and struggles through all artistic languages, theater included.
In the year of 2018 “TePI – Gatherings of resistance” was accomplished as an in-person event. Four gatherings and a theatrical play took place at Sesc Pompeia (SP), open to the public, bringing discussions on the indigenous body consciousness and its representativeness in performing arts; the struggle ruled by colonial exploitation and the ancestral relationship with the land; but also, on the perception of art as an act of resistance.
In view of the digital effervescence brought by the pandemic, we firstly hesitated before bridging TePI to the digital platform format, being aware of the transforming bias an in-person gathering, inherently related to the theater, and with indigenous artistic thinkers, could be. Choosing this format was the possibility of continuity we found, as well as the interchange in national and international scopes a platform like this can provide, reaching the public, in a sensitive way, through the created content and the exchange between artists from different places in the world. That’s why the internationalization program is so important, being launched in the first step of TePI – Digital Platform.
We refuse to just watch the tragedy in action, which has been destroying the Amazon, and destroying the river-peoples’ and forest-peoples’ lives. We know there are many movements that, just like TePI, are making a fuss and screaming “NO! You gotta stop destroying our planet EARTH”. The only thing we can be sure of is that we won’t stop building alliances with all the people crossing our way, through art, for life.
