First stop CommonLAB 2024: Lisbon

This year, Common Stories' traveling laboratory kicks off in Lisbon and nine emerging artists from the performing arts whose careers or fields of exploration touch on issues of diversity have been invited to take part in an eight-week residency: Azani V. Ebengou, Pankaj Tiwari, Jin Xuan Mao, Nadim Bahsoun, Avildseen Bheekhoo, Diego Bragà, Agathe Yamina Meziani, Lucía García Pullés and Inés Sibylle Vooduness.

Following the November 2023 open call, the group of nine artists was selected and they will be working in the studio at Espaço Alkantara between June 17 and 30, accompanied by choreographer Sonya Lindfors and playwright Keli Freitas.


[Workshop with Sonya Lindfors]
Working with F(r)ictions – Decolonial and Speculative Practices
About the fictions and frictions, needs and desires, hopes and dreams created by artists in times of multiple crises! The workshop consists of two parts. The first part is focused on group dynamics and a happy landing into the upcoming process – getting to know each other, creating ways and guidelines to work and communicate in an intersectional and diverse group. What are the needs and dreams of the participants? What would the group need in order to be able to work together? How can they create that space? The second part of the workshop will go deeper into decolonial and speculative practices and the possibilities of the stage as a miracle making machine. During these days the group will discuss, move, write and dream – together.

[Workshop with Keli Freitas]
Desire as Document
Keli Freitas shares some of the experiences and questions that permeate her research and interests as a theatre-maker, such as the everyday writing of ordinary people, working with personal documents, disruptive autobiographical narratives, and the power of seemingly unimportant events in the macrosphere of inventive gestures.


After Lisbon, the lab continues its way to Maputo (from to 2 to 15 September, Culturarte Mozambique), Bobigny (from 14 to 27 October, MC93) and Brussels (from 28 October to 10 November, Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles).

Sonya Lindfors is a Cameroonian–Finnish award–winning choreographer and artistic director that also works with facilitating, community organising and education. In all her work, Lindfors aims to shake and challenge existing power structures, penetrate society, and empower community.

Keli Freitas is a playwright, theatre-maker and actor from Brazil, living in Portugal. A collector of letters written by anonymous people, she is dedicated to developing authorial works based on so-called ordinary writings, such as the Carimbaria project. Her recent creations include "Outra Língua" (2022) and "Take my breath away" (2023).