This year, we propose several experiences that are not yet a transformation of the most recent model, but rather a sign of its ongoing search. The festival’s antechamber, which we call Works in Progress, will include more than just the final projects of students from the University of Minho. In addition to open rehearsals and critical feedback sessions, we will present the work that Formiga Atómica will develop with several performers from Guimarães—part of the expanded programme preceding the performance “Just One More Seagull.” In this sense, we will also screen the documentary “Seagulls on Land,” in partnership with the Cineclube: a tender look at a class of theatre students, twenty years after their separation.

This is the gateway through which we will enter the festival: Ana Borralho and João Galante, after a week of work with twelve young people who study or live in Guimarães, present “Trigger of Happiness,” based on their expectations for the future and the stories that shaped them. What legacy, after all, have we left to a generation, and what do they hope to carry forward? Legacy will indeed be a word we repeat several times, including in the performance “Death Comes Through the Mouth,” a commission to the young company N.A.V.I.O. and T.E.R.B., staged at C.A.R. and at the CCVF Café Concerto in the late afternoon.

At new times as well, we will present “Ivu’kar,” a performance about love and eternity, created by João Grilo and his mother before her passing. In the gardens of the Vila Flor Palace, and on the final Saturday of the festival, we will be able to experience “Spreading Bile,” Mickaël de Oliveira’s audiowalk. Immediately after the piece by the former artistic director of Teatro Oficina, we will have the opportunity to see again “Everything in Avignon and Me Here,” premiered in December last year, directed by its new artistic leadership. This is a form of legacy that goes beyond the very nature of the performances themselves. One of the pieces, through a dystopian future that is not hard to imagine, challenges the repertoire and the various oppressive forces surrounding it; the other critiques the constraints of theatrical infrastructure, while asking whether there is still room in theatre—so little room—to imagine different futures.

Finally, two performances that seek to imagine otherwise: Isabél Zuaa will premiere “AFRO SAL.OYA,” an exploration of sound and its impact on the body, lived experiences, and memory, drawing from a vast African and European cultural heritage; while Luísa Guerra, winner of the Amélia Rey-Colaço grant, will bring a shared room to Guimarães. “TOSHIIB4” is a digital journey that intimately traverses the childhood and adolescence of someone who had a computer of their own—and who, through that world, reinvents and self-determines.

Alongside the presentation of performances, we return to thinking about and creating new formats. Through the “hypertext” programme, initiated last year, we invite young Portuguese creators to write for the digital space based on the presented works, in partnership with CoffeePaste, Comunidade Cultura e Arte, and Gerador. This is not theatre reflecting on theatre; it is theatre trying to step outside itself. In the same field of thought and training, we launch the masterclass “Unreliable Narrator,” aimed at students and professionals in theatre, journalism, and literature, taught by Brazilian artist Luanda Casella, resident artist with the Belgian company NTGent.

A festival should always resist the temptation of mere collecting. Its experience should be of another kind—that of someone who goes out into the field and only returns after forgetting the way back. In this regard, nettles help more than flowers: the sting they leave is not just an impression, it is a memory of the field itself.

Forgetfulness and sting—this is what we wish for you all. And the rest, let it be celebration.