The Materiais Diversos Festival promotes the meeting of different audiences and imaginaries around the arts (dance, theatre, music and performance) with thought, questioning actuality and fostering cultural participation as a condition for citizenship. Born in Minde, in 2009, it spread to Alcanena and Cartaxo (in 2013) and became one of the most representative projects for programming outside the large centres in Portugal, attempting to think and act from the places it originates. It had been occurring annually until 2017 and became a biannual event starting with its 10th edition in 2019.
From the 3rd to the 12th of October 2025, the Festival Materiais Diversos will be in Alcanena and Minde with a program of dance, theater and music shows, installations and conversations.
Intended for children between the ages of 6 and 10, this duet reflects on discovery – the discovery of the ‘Other’, but also on new meanings when we face those things that surround us. Matrioska takes as its departure point the idea that there are many layers superimposed on those things that we see. Many times, what we see with our eyes is nothing more than a first image, the most immediate one of many which lie behind it.
Our matrioska, rather than being a big doll containing other, similar ones within, (like the famous Russian doll), is a sort of place which, due to its device, permits one to work inside, outside, behind, in front, hidden and in view, permitting the different layers of reality to discover each other as in a sort of kaleidoscope of images and situations.
It is this constant and intriguing discovering which we want to pass on to the children. What could there be behind that? Inside this? What is that shadow? Is someone inside of it? What language does this singer sing? What is hidden underneath this form?
We want Matrioska to be an enigma from beginning to end, with questions raised, some answered, others not, and that, above all, in the end it is the children themselves who construct their own stories.
We provide the elements and the ingredients, most of the time with in no apparent order, and we leave the challenge of organizing them as they wish to the children.
PREMIERE
30 January – 3 February 2007
Le Vivat, Armentières, FR
Sofia Matos
sofia.matos@materiaisdiversos.com
+ 351 913633452
Sara Abrantes
sara.abrantes@materiaisdiversos.com
+351 915227787
Diversos