All About Us

Teatro da Garagem (TG), a theatre company and public utility institution, celebrates in 2026 37 years of regular activity. Throughout its journey, it has dedicated its artistic work to research and experimentation, exploring new forms of writing for theatre and the scenic inventions that accompany them, in a continuous practice of reflection on the contemporary world.

Since its founding, the question of recognition and communication through Theatre has been an essential driver of the company's work, triggering a permanent artistic questioning and an impulse for innovation that can be synthesized in a central concept: Openness.

This Openness manifests itself, on the one hand, in the relationship with other arts, integrating practices such as painting, photography, cinema and other performing arts. It also manifests itself in a critical attention to technological contributions — from digital to artificial intelligence — and to the communicational, experiential and political transformations that cross the present, questioning their sociological, anthropological and, above all, aesthetic impacts.

Openness also translates into a readiness for encounter with other art makers, from different generations, languages and paths, who join the project in a dynamic of continuous renewal, challenging and vital to the identity of Teatro da Garagem.

Built upon its history, accumulated knowledge and integration of new collaborators, Teatro da Garagem embraces change as a natural condition of artistic creation, without ever losing the specificity of a demanding and irreverent experience, sustained by a restlessness rich in signs that alert to the singularity of the human and to its continuous process of transformation and learning, in a horizon of critical optimism and civic commitment.

As the name suggests, Teatro da Garagem began its activity in a garage in the suburbs of Lisbon — a hybrid territory, at the crossroads of landscapes, references and experiences. This origin indelibly marked the company's aesthetics and the writing of its playwright, director and artistic director, Carlos J. Pessoa, steering the work towards zones of alteration and displacement, as well as towards the valorisation of the intangible — everything that contributes to the refinement of artistic discourse and to its quality, density and resonance over time.

The trajectory of Teatro da Garagem is widely recognized nationally and internationally, by audiences, specialized critics, cultural institutions and governmental structures. This recognition adds to the project an increased responsibility towards the local, national and international community, understanding Theatre as a space of thought, sharing and intervention.

The Educational Service constitutes a structural axis of the Teatro da Garagem project, articulating artistic creation, pedagogy and community engagement. Through ongoing activities with children, adolescents and the elderly, theatre clubs and projects developed in partnership with schools, museums, local authorities and other cultural entities, TG deepens its mission as a Public Service project, promoting critical thinking, artistic experimentation and plural access to contemporary creation.

Throughout its history, the company's work has been organised in distinct artistic cycles, corresponding to specific creative moments and to the social, cultural and technological transformations of the world. Teatro da Garagem has been, simultaneously, avant-garde and reflection, permanently articulating the old and the new in a restless, engaged and responsible practice. Aware of the relevance of its journey, TG preserves its history for future memory, through a physical and digital archive, ensuring the documentation, conservation and transmission of its artistic heritage, as well as access to it for research, training and cultural mediation purposes. Therefore, the future is always thought of without ever ignoring the past.

Since 2005/2006, Teatro da Garagem has been a resident company of Teatro Taborda, at the invitation of EGEAC and the Lisbon City Council, consolidating a singular trajectory in the Portuguese theatrical landscape.

It is from this place — between memory and transformation, openness and commitment — that Teatro da Garagem continues today its artistic, pedagogical and civic work.