Projecto ARTHE – Arquivar Teatro
Organic Unit: FCSH
Research Center: Instituto de História Contemporânea
Organic Unit: FCSH
Research Center: Instituto de História Contemporânea
The IHC was one of the proposing institutions of the ARTHE project, that aims to identify, map, and assess the situation of theater archives in Portugal, in order to establish a plan of good practices involving a network of institutions.
The ARTHE project aims at locating, mapping and studying the situation of theatre archives in Portugal, to set up a plan of good practices involving an institutional network and theatre companies. The archives of Teatro da Cornucopia, a major force in the political and aesthetic renewal of theatre in Portugal after the 25th April Revolution and of Mário Barradas, the main promoter of theatrical decentralization. Based on the analysis of these two important assets, and extending the research methodology to the archives of other theatre companies in the country, ARTHE intends to broaden the analysis of public and private conservation policies in order to foster ‘good practices’ of preservation, accessibility and study of (and with) the companies’ and artists’ archives. This will be achieved by disseminating the research results through a website, a booklet collection, two conferences, debates both in theatre and archival venues, and an e-book.
The project stems from what was called “Independent” theatre – the umbrella term for the heterogeneous group of non-commercial companies that emerged after 1974. Extensively cartographing its national and international affiliations, descendants, and influences, it expects to contribute to the debates on the role of archival practices as recently reinvested by artists and academics alike, in the construction of critical transnational and decentered historiographies of the performing arts. ARTHE is the first project to approach this type of documentation to spot existing assets, gaps and archiving modalities practiced both by companies and institutions, in order to build a national map and intervene against the disappearance of information that is fundamental for our knowledge of the profound changes in the ways companies are organized, as well as in forms of theatre since the 70s.
