Happening now via Instagram.

Coming to The Chocolate Factory Theater in 2021.

What is a theater without a theater? A dance without a dancer? Are the bodies of the audience no longer able to feel empathy, to be moved? What do we need a dance for in these times? Is the theater the sharing of ourselves in a space? Or is it simply the agreement, the framing as such? In these times of isolation can we perceive the theater in the body? Can our bodies be our sites? What of the spaces between the audience and the stage, between our bodies? The space of transference; the space that carries the empathetic response, the being moved, the moving, the feeling, the expansion and transformation of our perception during and after the magic of the theater…: The Spell!

PURO TEATRO: a spell for Utopia furthers achugar’s mission for making work as a practice of growing a new theater, a utopian theater; a practice of making theater as a practice of growing a collective body with the audience; an uncivilized body, a decolonized body, a utopian body. It embraces the dystopian reality of bodies that cannot touch one another, but can touch a screen, and proposes that our bodies become the site with our technologies as ritual objects and portals to other embodied realities.

PURO TEATRO: a spell for Utopia seizes this moment of isolation to consider the possibility of the theater inherent in the intimacy of our own experience, within the spaces of our bodies, our homes, and our cities. A theater without theater, distilled to its essence by the artist “downloading” their work directly to the audience as a spell, an intimate incantation.

Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) acknowledges and advances new developments in contemporary art while fostering the creative explorations of artists and audiences. PICA’s programming supports the experiments of the most vital and provocative artists of our time. Our vision is international, intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and decidedly forward thinking (even when those explorations look back in history). PICA is unique among institutions for working right alongside artists at the increasingly blurry boundaries between forms and at the edge of new ideas. Throughout the year, audiences have myriad opportunities to interact with artists, curators, critics, and cultural visionaries in a direct, in-depth way. From performances to exhibitions to lectures to the annual Time-Based Art Festival, our programs catalyze conversations about contemporary culture.