The history of the "Giants of Animated Forms" is deep and vast, being part of the popular mythology of many cultures, as is the case of the “Gayants” figures of Douai (1480), the “Gog and Magog” of London (1839), the demons that represent the Hindu epic Ramaiana or the “Mbambi” of the African Pende tribe.
At national level, the oldest record of the Gigantones, as they were nicknamed, appears in 1265 linked to a religious manifestation, with the procession of the Body for God in Évora. Later it was introduced together with the Cabeçudos (Bigheads), in Portuguese festivals and pilgrimages, directly or indirectly, through the Spanish region of Galicia, with the custom being imported, in 1893, to the Pilgrimage d'Agonia, in Viana do Castelo.
The entry of these disproportionate forms into the universe of the spectacle comes through the hands of Robert Edmond Jones in Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex (1931), having taken on the most varied forms over time in the field of performing arts, which we can find in the imagination of collectives artistic works such as Manifole de Geneviève and Yves Vedrenne (1964), Bread and Puppet Theater (1965), Théâtre du Soleil (1970), Royal de Luxe (The Giant fallen from the sky, 1993), among many others.
GIANTS OF THE ANIMATED FORMS it's a Workshop on the Construction of Cabeçudos (Bigheads) and/or Gigantones, which starts from popular culture, as a bearer of a sense of continuity, of union between the present and the origin of times and fundamentally of the imaginary, crossing it with more modern construction techniques, using different raw materials, also proposing a reflection on the role played by this artistic expression in the construction of contemporary cultural discourse, with the aim of leaving its contribution to a future generation of builders of these animated forms.
This workshop is directed by Pedro Domingues Leal, Plastic Artist and Performer, which has in his training several national and international formations, linked to the universe of the Animated Forms, including Special and Prosthetics Characterization in Cazcarra Image Group with Ismael Reinón (Barcelona), Kathakali (Gesture Theatre) with Master Jon Kalamandalam (Kerala, India), School of Mask Technique (Commedia dell'Arte) with Philip Crawford at the Theatre House of Comedy (Lisbon) as well as the different construction techniques of Nepal masks with Master Dhan Bahadur Lama (Changu Narayan, Nepal) and Bali Masks with Master Ida Bagus Anom Suryawan (But Village, Bali, Indonesia).
Audience Target: Actors, Entertainers, Educators, Teachers and others interested in this construction technique ( > 12 years old)
Formation Hours (for Bigheads Construction): 16 Sessions of 3h/each | Total 48 hours
Number of Participants: Maximum 15 participants
