I once applied to a Ph.D. program, searching for words to translate my artistic self into others. While defining a research proposal, I met a potential supervisor who, within five minutes of conversation, told me, "That is because you are a Brazilian artist; you should read Fred Monten."

"Blackness is fugitive, and fugitivity is a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed." 

Monten, Fred.

As a non-binary Brazilian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist in theatre, dance, and film, my work deliberately reinvents itself once a project is completed and a new way of seeing the world is embodied.  In my waywardness I become impossible to pin down, but under every project I engage I am, indeed, a Director. This philosophy is inherited from my Brazilian and racially mixed upbringing, my queerness, my class experiences, my immigration lens and a few more things. Monten's concept, however, is the one that most closely explains my career to others. Any label can become constricting - queer artist, immigrant artist, theatre artist. But fugitive…fugitivity illuminates the reasoning for non-linearity, for the transgression of the pre or newly-established order, for reinvention, for challenging every set mode and never fitting in. 

My work started in 2012 when I studied acting conservatory in Rio - Brazil, and later moved to Ottawa in 2016 for an MFA in Directing. As a kid always living in between spaces, a fugitive of norms and curious about life, I utilize my work to bridge the worlds I inhabit, worlds often sorted by age, artistic genre, class, gender, race and so on. Live arts can temporarily dissolve those barriers within a society that tends to gather in like-to-like groups. As an artist, my work gathers in the same place and time lives that are formally set away from each other. The circus, the theatre and street carnival were cultural examples that fascinated me because one's wealth, sexuality or religion became invisible as we shared the same human experience.

If you want to experience this play you have to be here, in whatever place it is happening, beside whoever ends up sitting next to you.

For that to be achieved, art-making needs diversity, so my collaborators are often varied in age or professional background, and I apply the tools, codes and knowledge of all the worlds I inhabit to connect the experiences in the room. I'm a gatherer, someone who needs to speak as many life languages as possible to facilitate the collision and rebuilding of what this creation room looks like when we all work there. 

For the audiences, I invite them into a theatrical world that is aesthetically out of the ordinary; it's either bigger or smaller, perhaps louder or upside down. My worlds house simple human stories of love, grief, fear or joy, hoping that this "material change" of the ordinary can give us new glasses when leaving the theatre, the performance, and the event.

My first contact with theatre as an artist was through summer workshops while doing an undergrad to be a Diplomat, and these workshops led to me dropping out of that program to study theatre full-time. In my second year of theatre school, I joined an anarchist theatre company with an ethos of collective creation. Our first piece, about Brazil's dictatorship period, led to a spot in a local theatre's season, for which the collective subverted itself and invited me to direct our next play. That is when my career as a Director and a Deviser officially started, with that first piece planting the seeds for what I do today. Intuitively, I began from my classical and narrative-centred training with a process transgression: we broke hierarchies on casting and playwriting by bringing in a text, then letting the actors choose their characters as study cases, and slightly rewriting the scenes to serve what was being proposed. When I think of it, by simply entering an anarchist theatre company out of conservatory training, I was intuitively following my desire to merge often separated philosophies.

I was propping particle collisions while using my skills as the accelerator. 

In storytelling, I yearn to explore the private with the public, focusing on rarely told stories, such as of temporary migrants, or purposefully kept private, such as family taboos. When invited to projects, I accept materials with a layered level of tenderness to them. Tenderness, as a concept, carries softness and soreness, holding in itself the poetic and the brutal, the wonder and the void, the gentle and the despairing.

In theatre, I place significance in the architectural aspect of performance, something reminiscent of Schechner's Environmental theatre, having staged pieces in alley, travelling, arena and proscenium format - always starting from the topography and then working with the actors and designers to animate and embody that space. In 2022, I had the chance to teach a BFA class, "The Actor and The Environment," and I had a blast. 

A director, for me, is a world builder and is responsible for offering collaborators an internally cohesive village they can inhabit. That building also accounts for the audience's presence, whether as a voyeur, a witness or a participant. 

Due to my acting and Latin American background, my work with the actors emphasizes gesture as narrative, reminiscent of Pina Bausch's repetition, connecting the sometimes harshly separated islands of theatre and dance. I am often cited as either a Choreographer, a Director, a Dramaturg or a Creator.

As an intercultural and interdisciplinary artist, I am deliberate in evolving my artistic process, adjusting to each project and medium and making leadership decisions that support the contradictions present in the room, which are often dictated by the resources and goals of the piece as well as the desires and needs of the collaborators present.  

My artistic influences in theatre include Performance theory from Diana Taylor and Peggy Phelan; staging aesthetics from the Brazilian theatre of the tail end of Dictatorship, which includes Victor Gracia and his cylindrical stages or audience seating in revolving chairs as well as the small stories of resistance told in intimate spaces from Plinio Marcos. I've been hooked on Pina's narrative since Cafe Muller, and I closely follow the work of contemporaries such as Maiko Yamamoto and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha. 

All these artists explore either a unique relationship with the audience, a reshaping of the stage, a creation methodology based on collaboration or a narrative that challenges the supremacy of words. 

They inspire me to find one or two uniquely challenging, transgressive, fugitive aspect in every piece I direct. 

If it's a parenting story, can it happen on Minecraft? If it's an activist piece, can it be techno-shamanic? If it's poetic, can we change how the audience engages? If it's classical, can it happen in a moving set? If it's a narrative, can we do it without words? 

Much like jazz, my practice has a comprehensive list of instruments available, and they are used depending on the session's proposal. One can recognize the artist's essence by the body of work, but each session is fresh. 

As I move through my journey, I am evolving my skills towards larger-scale projects to amplify my instrument list and better serve the stories I tell, so my lack does not constrict them. Theatre makers need to be responsive to the times they live in; they need to learn as many life languages as possible to not limit their artistic abilities to the bubbles surrounding them. Thanks to everyone that wanted to work with me, I learned to - but not only : direct a classical play ( Caravan of Illusion ) and a devised piece ( The Glass ), lead and direct a team of actors with an age range of 20 to 70+ ( Four Whores and a Pro ); be the auteur of a project ( an-ti-gon-nee ); choreograph a wordless piece ( Small Tortures - i love you ); serve the vision of a creator ( The Remembering and My Good Friend Jay ); assist another director ( Romeo & Juliet ) and so on.

My work wants to engage with all the communities I love, and I love many of them, so I must keep escaping.