Last Stop Theatre Square

Stimulating children’s imagination and creativity were two of ACTA’s objectives when they created their VATe project back in January 2006.

“I think most people think we just go to shools to present a show, and then go away again. In fact, we spend the whole academic year working with pupils” at Algarve primary schools, reaching normally isolated rural areas like Alcoutim, Martinlongo, Rogil, Monchique and others.

“On our first visit, we present a show and then talk with the children about what they’ve just seen, and how it made them feel”, explains VATe coordinator Jeannine Trévidic, 30. “Then, we leave them with some “homework” until we return.

They work two or three months on a show of their own - which they’ll perform when we come back! It’s the class themselves that organises this”.

“This is why the bus is so important – as it’s a stage that’s also for the children. A place where they can use lights, sound, dressing rooms. A place where they can be actors for a day,” adds Jeannine who has been “on the road” with the bus for the last three years.

The puppet shows and performances using shadows are especially entertaining. “They’re very good at getting the children’s attention”, she adds. The VATe team, currently made up of four, works with plays based on the fables of French writer Jean de La Fontaine, or classics like Miguel de Cervantes’ Dom Quixote - sometimes even Shakespeare.

“It’s very good because in a way it prepares the children for what they’ll find in their scholastic careers”, says Carla Dias, 35, who has been part of the VATe team since its inception. For example, “Ulysses is a beautiful story for youngsters because, at some point or other, we stop and ask ourselves “what makes a hero?”

One day, there was a child who hadn’t wanted to take part in anything but who suddenly broke his silence and said: a hero is someone who has hope! It may sound like a stock phrase, but the children surprise us everyday”, she adds.

On average, between 2008 to 2010, 8000 people enjoyed around 300 performances per year on the bus. At least two productions are offered a year. This season’s play is called “The craziest history of aviation in 9 minutes and 30 seconds” and, of course, without the bus - currently out of commission in a garage near Olhão - the team will have an even harder job transforming primary school classrooms for the shows.

Meantime, we decided to get to know the Theatre Bus. We met at the garage with bus driver Luísa Gonçalves and actor Luís Vicente. The bus is 12 metres long, three wide and four metres high.

It weighs 18 tons and uses 50-litres of diesel for every 100 kilometres. It’s currently stripped to its bare essentials...in pieces. Luísa Gonçalves gives us a little more background: “It was used by EVA bus company for 15 years, in the Transrápido fleet – going back and forth between the Algarve and Lisbon. Then it was taken out of commission, and ACTA bought it, rebuilt it, and brought it back to life”. But at the end of last winter, the first problems started. Rain leaked into the interior as a result of rust and cracking seams.

But public coffers are empty. Both the State and a lot of the Algarve’s borough councils are on the verge of bankruptcy, and for years, ACTA’s budget - along with that of many other cultural institutions - has been subjected to successive cuts. So the key question is: how can a regional theatrical project for local children be saved, at a time when money’s running out every which way?

Enter Keith Johnson, stage right. He could tell a lot of stories about buses, as he used to run them to and from England and the continent. He retired a while back – to the Algarve – and left his transport business to his son.

Johnson is the chairman of the Almancil International Rotary Club, where two dozen businesspeople from nine European countries support various social initiatives in the Algarve. They meet every Wednesday in one of the rooms at the Almancil social and cultural association, to discuss charitable projects.

This is how Johnson and Luís Vicente came to be sitting round the same table. ACTA presented their dilemma, and the Rotary members discussed a plan. By the end of last September, Rotary had agreed they would help the Theatre Bus project.

Together, in November, ACTA and Rotary will be presenting three “extraordinary” performances of «Ardente» (see box), the play currently touring the Algarve. Through ticket sales alone, these additional performances could generate half the money needed to repair the bus. The other half should come from sales of advertising space on the bus.

Uschi Kuhn and Martin Temple also belong to the Almancil Rotary club – which is now giving the bus a good eye-over in the «Sul-Truck» garage. What’s paramount for Rotary when acting as a financial partner is that investments are sustainable long-term. They want to ensure the Theatre Bus won’t need urgent repairs again, in the near future. They want to ensure their resources aren’t chanelled into “white elephants”…

As for Carla Dias, she says “teachers are realising more and more that the arts are very important when it comes to children’s education” as they permit “learning through play”. “There are teachers who think their pupils are more interested in schoolwork since participating in this project” which helps develop “critical ability” and team spirit, she adds. Sometimes, “teachers even discover something in their pupils that they hadn’t seen before, and start to look at these children in another way”, explains Jeannine Trévidic.

Inspired by VATe, small school theatre groups have also been born. “In Monchique the children and their teachers are always very inspired – possibly because they live in the mountains!” Carla Dias smiles.

Even after leaving primary school “there are children that come back and knock on our door, asking if they can help”. The love of the theatre stays with them for the rest of their lives. “It’s a seed that starts to germinate!”

Luís Vicente, actor and playwright already well-known to the Portuguese public through his work on television, explains the importance of this educational project: “the theatre goes to these children’s villages and the bus is the only thing that really brings something different into their daily lives”.

“Our project is not only unique, because of the bus, but also because of the work we develop. It can’t end like this. There are children out there waiting for us to come back”, Jeannine Trévidic concludes.

ACTA’s play is about Inês and Pedro - about the love and death of the two characters who lived in the north of the Iberian Peninsula more than 650 years ago. The drama begins on 13th January 1355, when Spanish noblewoman Inês de Castro was executed on the orders of the Portuguese king Afonso IV. She was the beloved mistresss of Crown Prince Pedro I. Presenting ARDENTE is Polish director Leszek Madzik, professor at the Catholic University of Lublin. Madzik was a student of Karol Wojtyla - otherwise known as Pope John Paul II.

He is well-known internationally as a master of plays that depict the visual aspect of feelings. His theatre is a performance of images and impressions - using no words. Music is by Zé Eduardo, known to many from the Portuguese jazz scene. The play lasts just 60 minutes. Performances in the following theatres in the

Algrve:

TEMPO Portimão Municipal Theatre, Friday, 18th November 2011, 20.30

TEATRO LETHES in Faro, Saturday, 19th November 2011, 20.30

TEATRO LETHES in Faro, Sunday, 20th November 2011, 16.00

Price of tickets: € 20 each.

Ticket sales: ASCA in Almancil, Supermarkets Apolonia in Almancil e Galé.