09 — 12.05
Carolina Bianchi, / Cara de Cavalo São Paulo-Amsterdam-Brussels
The Brotherhood
TRILOGIA CADELA FORÇA – Capítulo II
theatre — premiere
| Portuguese, English → FR, NL, EN | €25 / €20 | ⧖ 3h40 with a 15min break | Contains nudity, explicit sexual content, alcohol abuse, references to suicide and sexual violence
Theatremaker, writer, and performer Carolina Bianchi is internationally acclaimed for her powerful stage presence and brutal eloquence. With The Brotherhood—the second part of her Cadela Força trilogy on sexual violence—Bianchi explores masculinity as a brotherhood that renders men untouchable, part of a system that perpetuates violence against women, yet still provokes admiration in art history. She uses the theatre world as subject, language, and apparatus, exposing the faux progressivism that gives intellectual masculinity free rein as an exclusionary mechanism.
The play portrays an aversion to but also fascination with male power dynamics, and how to navigate them as a woman. In the first act, Bianchi interviews heavyweight theatre director Klaus Haas. In the second act, a group of male performers hijack the show. References to the British playwright Sarah Kane and the writer Emily Brontë are woven in between.
Bianchi and her Cara de Cavalo collective create dialogues between theatre phantasmagoria and trauma, personal writing and radical poetry, the origins of misogyny and the consequences of rape, and tie them to sexuality, representation and performance. An iconoclastic production awaited internationally, in world premiere at Kunstenfestivaldesarts.
"We have never heard someone talk so overwhelmingly about sexual violence against women in theatre before." - Filip Tielens, 2023 (about The Bride and The Goodnight Cinderella), De Standaard
There is already a certain atmosphere around you. We know that. It comes with being a second chapter. The first one was received. It left marks. It created expectations. This work insists on returning to what doesn’t go away. This is a piece made from long hours, many pages, and from standing inside questions that have no resolution. Some of them are brutal. Some of them are real. We’ve worked inside a language we didn’t invent, a space that wasn’t built for us. The Brotherhood of theater, its temples and ghosts. We are daughters of it What do we do with a body that went to hell, that was raped, and survived?
How many things were left unsaid, or sung too late. Voices were dismissed, whose urgency was misread as excess, Works that still make our own possible. This is a continuation of a conversation that was always cut short. The theater is not innocent. It is a space of power. We are inside it. We were shaped by its masters. We resist them and we carry them.
If something stays with you, let it be a question about destruction. About what we keep, and what we refuse to keep building.
Theatre is a shared act—watching something that once seen, cannot be unseen. It is physical work. At times it moves like thought—or like a new kind of strange synapses lighting up across the body. It has a radicality we cannot soften.
This paper is yours now. Let it haunt you, if it must. Let it dream you, if you’ll allow it. This page is not a key. It is a trace, a tremor, a reminder that this encounter happened. That something passed between us. You may carry it with you. You may forget it. If this text stays with you, let it stay as a reminder that not everything needs to be understood to matter. Some things live in the space after. After language. After comfort. After recognition. You can fold this page. Tear it. Keep it. Forget it. Either way, it is yours now.
Carolina Mendonça, April 2025
Carolina Mendonça is a choreographer, performer and dramaturge. She received a Master’s in Choreography and Performance from Giessen University in Germany and graduated in Performing Arts at ECA-USP.
09.05
- 19:00
10.05
- 19:00
11.05
- 15:00
12.05
- 19:00
Presentation: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, KVS
Concept, text and direction: Carolina Bianchi | With: Chico Lima, Flow Kountouriotis, José Artur, Kai Wido Meyer, Lucas Delfino, Rafael Limongelli, Rodrigo Andreolli, Tomás Decina and Carolina Bianchi | Dramaturgy and research partner: Carolina Mendonça | Dialogue on theory and dramaturgy: Silvia Bottiroli | Translation to English: Marina Matheus | Translation to French: Thomas Resendes | Technical direction, sound design and original music: Miguel Caldas | Assistant direction: Murilo Basso | Set concept: Carolina Bianchi, Luisa Callegari | Art direction and costumes: Luisa Callegari | Light design: Jo Rios | Videos and screenings: Montserrat Fonseca Llach | Choreographic resurrection of prologue and movement advisor: Jimena Pérez Salerno | Live camera and artistic support: Larissa Ballarotti | Photography: Mayra Azzi | Internship: Fernanda Libman | Stage manager and production support: AnaCris Medina | Production assistant: Zuzanna Kubiak | Production direction, tour management and communication: Carla Estefan | International relations, production and diffusion: Metro Gestão Cultural
Production: Metro Gestão Cultural, Carolina Bianchi Y Cara de Cavalo | Coproduction: KVS, Theater Utrecht, La Villette, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Comédie de Genève, Internationales Sommer Festival Kampnagel, Les Célestins - Théâtre de Lyon, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Wiener Festwochen, Holland Festival, Frascati Producties, HAU Hebbel Am Ufer, Maillon - Théâtre de Strasbourg
With the support of the Ammodo Foundation and the Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government via Cronos Invest
Acknowledgements: Aenne Quiñones, Alexandra Moreira da Silva, Alissa Cica, Andras Siebold, Andrea Rodrigo, Anna Peligry, Anne Breure, Annemie Vanackere, Antonio Vanfill, Asa Horvitz, Barbara Engelhardt, Butt and The Bloody Riders Motorcycle Club - Berlin Chapter, Camille Desjardin, Carmen Hornbostel, Catalina Insignares, Cecilia Kuska, Charlotte Roosblad-Adrian, Christelle Glazai, Christophe Geens, Corinna Humuza, Cris Lyra, Cristiana Camba, Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Danny Vandeput, Donald Berlanger, Doris Jaindl, Dries Douibi, Elisabetta Corona, Ella de Gregoriis, Ellie Bryce, Emily Ansenk, Francesca Corona, Frédéric Mazelly, Gerardo Salinas, Iris Raffetseder, Jana Penz, Joana Ferraz, Julien Gosselin, Kasia Torz, Kathy Van den Bossche, Katinka Enkhuize, Kristien De Coster, Livia Piazza, Luisa e Marina Dalgalarrondo, Massimiliano Leoni, Mark Timmer, Mathilde Greiner Pognant, Michael de Cock, Moana Holenstein, Noé Dervaux, Pauline Pierron, Piere-Yves Lenori, Raphaela Rößler, Raphaël Noël, Séverine Chavrier, Thany Sanches, Thibaud Decoene
