Helena Carla Gonçalo Ferreira - Chatas, Loucas e com Mau Feitio

The stage is deserted and the curtains are closed, as if awaiting a new story to be told. Over decades, countless stories have been told on this stage. But… who decided, over the centuries, which stories these would be and by whom they would be told?

In this book, Helena Carla Gonçalo Ferreira starts with a seemingly simple question—why don't women artists occupy positions of power in Portuguese theatre?—to dismantle, layer by layer, the invisible structures that have kept them on the margins. With an approach anchored in Cultural Studies and post-structuralist feminism, the author rejects the idea that it is enough to simply "include" more women: what is at stake is a profound transformation of the power relations that shape creation and its funding.

The investigation combines two studies: a case study, with an analysis of the archives of the Porto Experimental Theatre, revealing what the documents hold (and what they erase), and a series of interviews with Portuguese actresses, whose voices emerge throughout the book with disarming frankness. These are women who created after washing the dishes, who resisted being called boring, crazy, or grumpy, and who forged, in silence and in action, their own places of power.

The book ends with a play, because some stories deserve to be told on stage.