© Romain Beltrão Teule
Fantasmá
I begin by asking myself: How to continue? This question resonates on several levels — What does it mean to keep creating today? Should we stick to familiar forms as an act of resistance, or explore new ways of making? — but also on a personal and intimate level: What direction do I want to give to my work? What feels right and meaningful to me?
Fantasmá is a stage piece for three performers, marking a turning point in my practice: the shift from solo works to a group creation. It explores spectrality, hauntology, and the ghostly, while revisiting the artistic universe I have developed over the years and laying the groundwork for new creative horizons.
What happens to words that vanish from a language, falling into disuse? And what about new words, arriving from another language — what do they carry beyond their literal meaning? Do they bring with them the ghosts of a foreign culture into the host language? And what do these words do to our bodies? These questions unfold through a performative approach, drawing on the themes and tools I have explored in previous works — surtitles (Légende, 2017), dubbing (Dobra, 2021), and voice-over (OFF, 2025). In Fantasmá, these devices are revisited as ghostly procedures:
-dubbing as a generator of ghosts,
-surtitles as a means of space-time distortion,
-voice-over as a spectral presence — bodiless, offscreen, and yet profoundly affecting what is seen and heard.
Beyond these linguistic and audiovisual devices, Fantasmá also explores the theatrical apparatus itself as a producer of spectres and ghosts. The presence and absence of the body, the layering of voices, the interplay between what is seen and what is suggested — all contribute to creating an unstable field, where perception is in constant flux.
Credits
Creation Romain Beltrão Teule
Performance Romain Beltrão Teule, Vi Lattaque, Lara Ferrari Tummma
Light and Space Santiago Rodriguez Tricot
Sound design Mariana Carvalho
Dramaturgy Paula Caspão
Artistic Support Márcia Lança, Bruno Brandolino
Production Le Vertige (Fr)
Coproduction (ongoing) Théâtre de la Balsamine (Brussels); Rumo do Fumo (Pt)
Supported by the network R.O.M (Residencies On the Move) at La Balsamine (Brussels, Belgium) by invitation of le joli collectif – Théâtre l’ Aire Libre (France), and in partnership with Reykjavik Dance Festival (Iceland), Santarcangelo Festival (Italy), Théâtre Prospero and Théâtre Periscope (Canada). The R.O.M network is supported by the European Union in the framework of the Creative Europe programme, by the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
Romain Beltrão Teule
Born in Paris to a Brazilian mother and a French father, Romain Beltrão Teule holds a Bachelor’s degree in Design (École des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse) and a Master’s in Arts (École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes). In 2013, they moved to Lisbon to join the PEPCC (Programme d’Études, Recherche et Création Chorégraphique) at Forum Dança. There, they fell in love with a British person, learned English, and began to consider oral expression and languages as a field for artistic research. In 2014, they created Elisabeth, a performance in French, Portuguese, and English. In 2016, they stayed in Japan to immerse themselves in an unknown language. This experience gave birth to Légende, a conference-performance built around a fictional research on the language of birds, presented notably at the Be Festival (Birmingham, 2017) and broadcast in the UK and Spain as part of the Best of Be Festival (2018–2019). The piece received the Jury Prize for Best Show at FITT Noves Dramaturgies (Tarragona, 2020). In 2021, they created Dobra, a performance presented at Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II, Teatro Municipal São Luiz, and Festival Temps d’Images (Lisbon). Their latest creation, OFF, reflects on voice-over as a spectral presence.