ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Teatro O Bando on/off disengagement with "Nos Matamos o Cao Tinhoso!" (NMCT) colonial heritage paradoxically engages with and surpasses the collective silencing of the dictatorial/colonial periods. The words voiced by the actors are experienced collectively by the audience that watches a theatre performance that re-enacts the company's long tradition in politics of place and community. The students' willingness to share their own personal histories with the actors, and against the backdrop of a story drawing on Portuguese colonisation, questions hierarchical notions of dominant culture and presupposed notions of community separation: actors/spectators, adults/teenagers, teacher/students. O bando's adaptation of NMCT produced an example of cosmopolitan ideology by offering to people from different ethnic, educational and economic backgrounds an opportunity for interconnection and dialogue, side by side with affirmation and respect for different local communities and cultures. The Socialist Party government had been carrying out a reform of Portuguese primary schools that deactivated or refurbished several Plano do Centenario schools.
