mala voadora / Jorge Andrade & José Capela

The mala voadora company was founded in 2003 by Jorge Andrade (actor, director and playwright) and José Capela (architect and scenographer), its two artistic directors. All its activity, the production of shows and the programme of its headquarters - located on the Rua do Almada, in Porto, comprising of work, presentation and residency spaces – is articulated in an integrated manner. Its shows are characterised by their continued speculation on what theatre and a "dramatic text" can be, and by the tension between materials external and internal to the theatrical tradition. 

To date, mala voadora has presented its work in Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Cape Verde, Scotland, Slovenia, the United States of America, Finland, France, Greece, England, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Poland and in the Czech Republic, as well as participating in Portuguese theatre exhibitions for Chantiers d'Europe (Théâtre de la Ville, Paris), the Iberian Suite (The Kennedy Center, Washington) and PT platforms (O Espaço do Tempo, Montemor-o-Novo). 

mala voadora has been continuously active at its Porto headquarters since 2013, regularly presenting shows, hosting national and foreign artist residencies, conferences and many other cultural initiatives, including partnerships with festivals, support for other creators and maintaining close relations with various local structures. The mala voadora programme is characterised not only by its multidisciplinary character but also by the fact that it constitutes a laboratory of what the "programme" can be when it is made by artists in dialogue with other artists, programmers, researchers and publics. 

Jorge Andrade is the artistic director and director of mala voadora. He is a qualified acting coach with a degree in Theatre Studies, actors/scriptwriters branch, from the ESTC, where he did his teaching practice. He attended a Directing for Theatre course taught by Third Angel (Gulbenkian creativity and artistic creation programme) and trained as part of the Mugatxoan (Serralves Foundation/Arteleku) project. In 2003 he founded mala voadora with José Capela, with whom he shares the artistic direction of the company. In addition to being an actor, since 2004 he has directed the company's shows and has written several of their texts. He has worked with, among others, the Teatro da Garagem, Artistas Unidos, Comuna, Collectif Jambe; and with Jorge Listopad, Rogério de Carvalho, Álvaro Correia, Miguel Loureiro and Tónan Quito, among others. He was invited to stage a piece to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Gulbenkian Foundation; to participate in Tryangle - Performing Arts Research Laboratories Lab #1 (Marseille); to stage Companhia Maior, in collaboration with Tim Etchells; and to be part of the cast of Quizoola! Lisbon by Forced Entertainment. He has taught at the ESTC, Escola Superior de Dança and on the UM Theatre diploma programme, and has conducted workshops in Sheffield, Beirut, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Sarajevo and Maputo. His first work as director - Os Justos – was awarded an Honourable Mention of the M. Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão prize. Mozambique – which was also written by Jorge Andrade and published by Coimbra University Press –won the authors' prize (SPA/RTP) for best play, was nominated for the Golden Globes (Portugal) and was awarded an Honourable Mention by the Portuguese Association of Theatre Critics. He was listed for the authors' prize for directing Overdrama. What I Heard About the World, which he co-created, was nominated for best play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by the Total Theatre Awards. 

José Capela is artistic director and scenographer for mala voadora. An architect (FAUP, 1995), he obtained his doctorate with the thesis Operating Conceptually in Art/Operating Conceptually in Architecture. Since 2000, he has lectured at the University of Minho, where he teaches Architecture and Theatre, and has been a researcher at Lab2PT. With Cláudia Taborda, he organised the international conference "Arquitetura [in] ]out[ Politics" for the Lisbon Architecture Triennial in 2010 and is the author of the chapter entitled "Uma garrafa de Coca-Cola e duas estufas: política interna nas artes e na arquitetura" in the book entitled Aesthetics and Politics Among the Arts (Edições 70) and has been published in several architecture and performance art reviews. He published the scenography catalogue entitled "Modos de não fazer nada" in 2013; was president of the Portuguese Association of Scenography between 2016 and 2018 and he is the creator the Windows installation with which Portugal was officially represented at the Prague Quadrennial in 2019 and, with José Carlos Duarte, of the respective catalogue W: JC + JCD.  

In recent years he has also collaborated with the Companhia Nacional de Bailado, the Teatro Nacional São Carlos and the Casa-Museu Guerra Junqueiro, designed the permanent exhibition for the new Museu do Vinho do Porto (1st version in the Rua da Reboleira) and made a scenography-installation for the public spaces of the Teatro do Bairro Alto. He was nominated for the authors' prize for "Best Scenographic Work" in 2012 and 2017, and won the prize in 2016 for Pirandello by mala voadora.