Origins

My mother is a playwright, actor, theatre director and poet, working in Portugal for over thirty years. Her name is Gisela Cañamero, and she is extraordinary.

She writes songs that would make you cry. She writes intimate, moving plays, like the one about a mother who is dying and sings about her children bringing the morning, about becoming wind, about letting go of life. Or the one about walls and wounds in the aftermath of WWII.  She writes fun, exciting musicals, like the one about two kids who fall through a hole and end up in China, rescuing the magical phoenix from the evil emperor. Or the one about the three siblings living in a little village with a fountain, that had a sun and a moon (guess what happens when someone steals the moon). Or the one…

I have so far failed to convince her of the benefits of a single website. You can find her work scattered all over the webs:

• The website of her theatre company, arte pública, and her blog.
• Videos of most performances and plays can be found on arte pública’s vimeo and YouTube channels; there are someoutliers.
• Some of her poetry and theatre books can be ordered from wook. Others, like the poetry book Poderia a poesia, can be ordered from facebook.
• A talk about her work with children, an intervention on reading with love, and an interview about equality and gender issues in her work.

She also rescues dogs from impossible situations and gives them a new home. Donations are always welcome: get in touch with me.

(Divorce is a human right, and both my parents became happier after theirs.)

My dad finds and documents ancient songs, forgotten stories, hidden festivities and secret recipes for a living. I can’t quite describe his job, but then again, it goes both ways. He has a past life as a scenographer and a parallel one as a farmer.

He is also solely responsible for getting me into science fiction, which eventually led to physics. He is the happiest and most productive man I have ever met. His name is José Barbieri.

His work can be found at memoria media, a web museum to show and share videos, documentaries and studies related with cultural manifestations of intangible cultural heritage.