andrei bessa
(Brazil, 1987)
Andrei Bessa (Brazil, 1987) is a performer, dramaturg and researcher born in the northeast of Brazil and based in Lisbon since 2021. He holds an MA in Arts from the Federal University of Ceará (Brazil) and was part of PACAP — the Advanced Program for Creation in Performing Arts at Forum Dança, curated by João Fiadeiro. He is a member of Piscina, an independent collective based in Lisbon, and an artist with Inquieta Cia., a Brazilian dance and performance collective that develops artistic practices grounded in the experience of collectivity itself.
His research moves across performance, dance, theatre, audiovisual work and writing, articulating process-based dramaturgies and collective modes of creation. He investigates the fat and queer body as a field of aesthetic and political invention, engaging questions of normativity, masculinity, desire and representation. Through softness, excess and friction, he develops performative practices that affirm dissident bodies as poetic force and spaces of fabulation.
Within Inquieta Cia., he takes part in collaborative processes that challenge traditional notions of authorship and scenic composition. The collective’s works include “Pra Frente o Pior” (2016), the performative exhibition “Derivações do Pior” (2017), the installation “Ainda Pior de Novo” (2018), the performance-film “Construção Civil” (2021), the immersive work “Adiante” (2022), and the video triptych “Construção Civil – instauração coreofílmica” (2022).
In Portugal, he collaborates regularly with João Fiadeiro in projects presented across different contexts of creation and exhibition, including “O que fazer daqui para trás” (2021 and 2024), “From afar it was a island” (2024), “Self(ish)-Portrait” (2024), and “INTROSPECTIVA” (CCB, 2024). He also performed in and collaborated on the creation of “Quase nada é um plano” (Márcia Lança, 2025) and “Barricada” (Marcelo Evelin, 2022). In collaboration with Marcelo Evelin, he also co-conceived “Pra Frente o Pior” (2016–2026) and produced “Batucada” (2023).
Between 2020 and 2021, he was part of “Estudos sobre o Olho”, a research and practice group focused on theatre and post-pornography coordinated by Janaína Leite Albuquerque and André Medeiros Martins within the Research Center of Grupo XIX de Teatro (São Paulo).
He is currently developing the fabulation of the “bear-unicorn”, a hybrid and dissident figure through which he investigates new fictions of body, eroticism and masculinity.
