Mónica Calle

Mónica Calle is artistic director, actress and theatre director at Casa Conveniente in Lisbon. Since 1992, she has worked with texts of authors like Stig Dagerman, Fiama Paes Brandão, Peter Handke, Thomas Bernhard, Luigi Pirandello, August Strindberg, Samuel Beckett or Anton Tchekhov. In 2007 she started to offer workshops blending actors and non-actors through classes and performances. Later, she also trained actors in prison, and engaged former inmates as performers.
In 2013, Casa Conveniente migrated to the Zona J of Chelas, a council estate, to create a new theatre space in Lisbon. This marks a return to the founding idea: to work from the margins. Mónica Calle is recognized in Portugal as part of a generation that took Portuguese theatrical creation to new paths in the early 1990s, and today sees her work as a stage director being widely recognized internationally. Her creations Ensaio Para Uma Cartografia (shown at Wiener Festwochen 2019) and Carta, both co-produced and premiered at the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, gained high acclaim and toured all around Europe.
Since the beginning of her career, Mónica Calle has been decorated with several awards as an actress and theatre director, including the Maria Isabel Barreno Award by the Portuguese Government.