Who we are

We are Sebastian Plano and Simão Valente and we met at the United World College of the Adriatic (www.uwcad.it), an international high school in Duino, a historical village on the Italian-Slovenian border. The philosophy of this institution was instrumental in the way it developed in us a strong sense of social and political awareness, as well as a personal commitment to "the implementation of these ideals through action and personal example", as the UWC mission statement goes.

After receiving a grant from the Kathryn Wassermann Davis 100 Projects for Peace initiative, we undertook our project in Cyprus, calling it Cyprus: Theatrum Mundi. Our experiences there led us to start a bigger action with eyes set on the long-term: the World Theater Project.

We are therefore set on continuity, actively seeking sponsorship and support that may enable future developments of our project's main lines of artistic enquiry: how to phrase in text, performance, music and film the anxieties and fears we share about the world we live in. The friendship we started in Duino and our common creative pulse enable us to work collaboratively with great joy and confidence in what we can achieve together.

Our immediate goal is to take our work to other parts of the globe, in a similar framework to what we have done in Cyprus. In the long run we hope to obtain consistent funding that would allow us to turn the World Theater Project into a larger group with a constant structure and permanent activities.

We want to make things happen.

Sebastian (Rosario, Argentina, 1985) is a graduate of the Boston Conservatory(‘08) , currently enrolled for a Masters degree in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. A cellist and composer, he has been twice the recipient of the Davis Projects for Peace grant ('07, '08) and has over the past few years explored his interest in film and electronic music, having worked with dancers and other musicians in creating site-specific videos. For more information check his website at www.sebastianplano.com

Simão (Lisbon, Portugal, 1987) graduated in Comparative Literature at the University of Lisbon ('08), where he is a junior member of the Center for Comparative Studies. He has won the Sea of Words literary prize (2008), and has published poetry and short stories in Cyprus, Spain and Portugal, works written originally in English, Italian and Portuguese. One of his Portuguese texts has been translated into Spanish and English. He has worked with the Anna-Lindh Foundation and the European Institute of the Mediterranean.