Xavier de Sousa, Almost Xav: Man up! [Still #1]

Portugese, b. 1986, playing from London, United Kingdom

Xavier de Sousa (a.k.a. Xav) is a performance maker and producer, interested in confrontation of artistic practices in performance as a means to creating creative outbursts live on stage. Xavier also likes to challenge the psychologies behind mainstream ideas of masculinity and power.

Xavier is currently developing Needless Alley Collective’s In Embryo, which will be premiered in 2014, and devising his own installation/durational performance piece, Almost Xav. The piece premiered at The Shag, Studio 180 and has just been commissioned to show at Latitude Festival 2013, Vogue Fabrics and Southbank Centre. Xavier is also currently curating an evening of live art and performance in aid of Oxfam Festival at Vogue Fabrics in London. In addition to this, he is also producing Louise Orwin's new feminist piece Pretty Ugly at Camden People's Theatre, which opened to overall success and acclaim. The show single-handedly kick started an international debate on how teenage girls utilize the internet for self-promotion, in particular the YouTube trend "am I Pretty or ugly?"

Previously, Xav has produced for King's Head Theatre's OperaUpClose and Good Night Out Presents and CITEMOR Festival. He also performed in Tino Sehgal's 'These Associations' (Tate Modern), Lauren Barri Holstein's 'SPLAT!' and ‘How 2 Becomes 1” (Barbican, SPILL Festival of Performance and Latitude) and Geraldine Pilgrim's 'Handbag' (Peopling The Palace Festival)

Thoughts on the Telephone process

I found the process incredibly stimulating as I was working with my instincts only. There was no context in which you can put the work you receive so you are free to go wild with your imagination, which is fantastic and it challenges you in ways that knowing context couldn’t.

The difficulty of it, for me, was in how to apply the sounds and essence that I got from the previous work onto my practice. How would my character absorb these things? What sort of story could my character go through that is in response to that?