“I have always belonged to the theater, I have always belonged to another place”

This interview with Cida Falabella - actress, director, and city councilor - is motivated by the desire to engage in a direct discussion with a citizen whose path articulates artistic practices and political action, in dialogue with collective theater, social struggles, and the conception of public cultural policies. Drawing upon her extensive involvement with the theater groups Sonho & Drama and ZAP 18, Cida Falabella first discusses the means of collaborative creation and the legacy of Brechtian epic theater as a form of critical engagement with social reality. She then highlights political performativity as a central operator in her public actions, both in theater scenes and in the municipal parliament of Belo Horizonte, where her body, voice, and stage presence challenge institutional codes and establish other forms of listening and dissent. By articulating memory, education, and activism, the interview reveals the micro-political impacts of an artistic praxis committed to social transformation and the production of new cultural territorialities in peripheral contexts.