about us

Paula Baró - Artist and Curator
She has been working in the performing arts field as a performer, playwright and director since 2000. She is part of different collective and activist art groups like Efimero, MARTE, Baró-Cutró and Colectivo Cielo Abierto. As curator and producer she has created and developed diverse independent festivals and platforms in Buenos Aires, such as Festival El Porvenir and Club Cultural Matienzo. Her research is based on participative art practices and on the interaction of art and its socio-political context. She is founder and co-director of Plataforma Lodo.

Marina Quesada - Artist and Cultural Manager
Her work is focused on the interdisciplinarity and collaboration among artists. Her work has been shown in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, India, Italy, Denmark and Germany. She graduated from the Metropolitan School of Drama of Buenos Aires, and she was granted with a scholarship by the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation to attend a postgraduate course at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona in 2000. From 2001 to 2007 she lived and worked in Berlin, where she graduated from her Dance Studies. Her first solo work as a director was Angela Pralini, performed at Das Beste Tanzsolo, contest created by the Belgian director Alan Platel, within the German Dance Festival Das Deutsche Tanzplattform. She has worked as a performer for artists such as De la Guarda, Laura Kalauz, Rodrigo Arena, Alexandra Pirici and Marina Abramovic. She works as a teacher and dramaturgist in Buenos Aires, and is founder and co-director of Plataforma LODO.

Rita Aquino - Artist, Teacher and Researcher
Her work is focused on collaborative practices, articulating activities that are related with education, artistic projects, and the approach with the audience.She works on establishing dialogues of aesthetic composition and critical reading in relation with the context and in the construction of poetics that propose a displacement of the gaze. She is a teacher at the School of Dance and at the Postgraduate Dance Program at UFBA, Brazil. She has a PhD in Performing Arts, and she is Master and Specialist in Dance by UFBA. She also has a degree in Dance from Angel Vianna School in Rio de Janeiro. She is part of the International Festival of Performing Arts of Bahia —FIAC— staff. Among her recent works are the Feitocal and LOOPING: Bahía Ovedub.

Felipe de Assis - Director, Curator and Cultural Manager
He works on the self-sustainability of the technical resources, which are operated autonomously on stage focusing on an aesthetic that strains elements of the everyday in its naked and raw form. His practices seek experiences of "doing with" in artistic and educational contexts based on dialogue, active listening, presence, empathy and solidarity, and their ethical, aesthetic, pedagogical and political implications. He is a teacher in Performing Arts at the PPGAC-UFBA and has graduated as a Theater Director at the UFBA Art University, Brazil. His artistic productions include the performances Feitocal, Papagayo, O olhar inventa o mundo, As Estrelas de Orinoco, Braseiro and LOOPING: Bahía Overdub. The latter has toured Brazil and Argentina, and in 2018 had its Scottish version in collaboration with the Scottish Dance Theatre Company. He has been one of the curators and general coordinators of the FIAC —Performing Arts International Festival of Bahia— since 2008.

Tomas Gonzalez - Actor and Director
After graduating from the universities of Lausanne (Switzerland) and Aberdeen (U.K.) in Film Studies and English literature, he joined the Haute école des arts de la scène de Suisse romande, La Manufacture-HEARTS to train as an actor. He works with directors Jérôme Bel, Milo Rau, Yan Duyvendak, Stefan Kaegi, Mohammad Al Attar, Sara Leghissa, Karim Bel Kacem or Emilie Charriot, either as an actor or artistic collaborator. His projects with K7 Productions, a structure he leads with director Igor Cardellini, are touring through Germany, Belgium, France and Switzerland. Since 2018, they have also been developing projects with fellow Swiss artist Rebecca Balestra. Tomas Gonzalez is now a regular teacher at Manufacture-HEARTS.

Igor Cardellini- Director, Dramaturg and Journalist
Following a university degree in social and political sciences in Lausanne, Igor Cardellini began collaborating on the dramaturgy of director Emilie Charriot's performances King Kong Theory (2014) and Ivanov (2016) both created at the Centre for contemporary Art Arsenic in Lausanne and Passion Simple (2017) at the Theatre Vidy-Lausanne. At the same time, he started working with Tomas Gonzalez with whom he directed O.V.N.I. (2017). Since 2018, the two of them developped with Rebecca Balestra the performances Self-Help at TU-Théâtre de l'Usine in Geneva and most recently Showroom (2019) in far° festival of the living arts in Nyon. He is a member of the Belluard Bollwerk International festival committee and a journalist for several Swiss newspapers.

Rébecca Balestra- Actress and Director
After getting her Bachelor of Theatre from Manufacture-HEARTS, Rebecca Balestra created her first solo work Flashdanse in Théâtre du Loup in Geneva. In 2013, she received the Studer/Ganz Drama Writing Award. Since then, she has worked with the Belgian theatre collective tg stan and directors such as Mathieu Bertholet, Natacha Koutchoumov, Hervé Loichemol, Anne Bisang and Michelle Pralong. Following her first solo project, she also created Tropique at TU-Théâtre de l'Usine in Geneva (2015), Show Set at far° festival in Nyon (2016) and at Arsenic (2017), in addition to Piano bar at the Comédie de Genève (2019). She was also a member of the Théâtre Poche-GVE ensemble for the 2018-19 season.