M de Manifesto is an artistic experience that blends music, theatre, movement and spoken word in a series of performative scenes designed to raise questions about the experience of being a woman/feminine.
M de Manifesto is currently at an advanced stage of development. Through artist residencies, the collection of personal accounts, performative experiences and moments of collective reflection, CMT’s new production is taking shape as a space that is at once intimate and political, sensitive and probing, where different female voices come together to explore the place of women in the contemporary world.
The starting point for M de Manifesto’s creative process lies in listening. Immersion in real-life stories, key texts from contemporary feminist thought, poetry, statistical data and documentary material helps to provide an artistic framework for the issues raised by the performance.
Through a multidisciplinary approach that blends music, theatre, movement and spoken word, a series of performative scenes is constructed, evoking different dimensions of the female experience — from childhood to motherhood, from invisibility to resistance, from imposed social roles to the possibility of deconstructing them. There are questions that continually recur throughout the process: Which voices remain unheard? Which silences remain normalised? What do we inherit, repeat or attempt to transform? Rather than seeking definitive answers, the performance presents itself as a space for active listening, where multiple perspectives, tensions and contradictions coexist.
The premiere of M de Manifesto will take place on 25 and 26 September at the Casa das Artes in Vila Nova de Famalicão. The first performance will be aimed at secondary school pupils in the municipality, emphasising the project’s educational and outreach aspects, whilst the performance on the 26th will be open to the general public. In October, the show will move to the Teatro Narciso Ferreira and, during November, will also visit Albergaria-a-Velha and Loulé. In the second semester of 2027, it will visit Montemor-o-Novo.
Like other CMT productions, such as A Liberdade a Passar Por Aqui and A Canção da Terra, M de Manifesto is a musical theatre production that is simultaneously a concert, a play and a performative installation. Although there is a particular focus on making the show accessible to secondary school pupils, given the urgency of the themes addressed and the importance of engaging with young audiences, it is a production designed for the main stage, for an audience aged 12 and over, and for anyone willing to reflect on issues of identity, inequality, memory and representation. After all, to reflect on the condition of women is to reflect on society as a whole.
M de Manifesto seeks to continue the work of “harmonising people, birds and flowers”; that is, of creating artistic works that aim to refocus attention on listening, empathy and human connection in the public space. In M de Manifesto, this attunement involves an attempt to create space for voices that are often interrupted, fragmented or silenced – voices which, when brought together, form a collective manifesto still in the making.
M de Manifesto does not seek to offer definitive answers. Rather, it seeks to make room for doubt, empathy and encounter.
M for Maria.
M for Mulher.
M for Manifesto.
