Showbusiness
SHOWBUSINESS was conceived by mala voadora, a theatre company, for PARTIS, Calouste Gulbenkian Fundation's program.
We gathered two social partners - the Escola de Comércio do Porto and A3S, specialized in social entrepreneurship and evaluation – in order to construct, together, and artistic program that goes along a professional course class.
During three years of work, this artistic program will intend to test, on the one hand, how can the art language enlarge that particularly vulnerable group of young student's horizons and capacities and, on the other hand, to confront ourselves with our own doubts about the art role on such complexes and persistent social problems.
To say it differently: we conceived an artistic program totally voted for experimentation. Everything's new: for the young students, whose artistic practices were incipient; to the school, which can, through the project, analyze the methods of its pedagogical project; for the evaluation, that accepted the challenge of capturing the results of a project like this one, and finally, for us, that started the project , determined not to give up the artistic demand and quality and focused in thinking and problematizing what we're doing, not only doing it.
The project is halfway, so we understand this is a good moment to testify the creative process and measure the designed strategy.
SHOWBUSINESS is this project but it is also a show. With artistic direction by Jorge Andrade and directed by José Nunes, Showbusiness was conceived and is starred by the 21 young students of the Sales Technician's course. They talk about commercial activity, finance need, creative sense and negotiation capacity. They're trying to open a store. They're trying to have ideas to open a store and they end up inside a theatre. Everything's connected. "Either way, a theatre is still a business. It can be a bad business, but it is, in fact, a business."