Sara Barros Leitão

“I do shows so I can learn about what’s on my mind”

Words:  Maria Martinho
Photos: Vânia Carneiro

Actor, playwright, director, activist and eternally dissatisfied, Sara Barros Leitão talks about feminism, the collective, freedom and discovery. At 33, she is touring the country with a new play and is preparing to realise a dream: to open a feminist bookshop in Porto by the end of the year.


Q: Who were the women in your life, the women who inspired you and were a reference point?

A: That’s a question I’ve never asked myself. In fact, my family had a big impact; they’re very tender and sensitive, dedicated to caring and with a shared sense of responsibility. It’s made up of men and women, but I think I’ve managed to find the feminine in almost every member of the family, including the men. I only became aware of the gender issue, and all the dimensions that these questions raise, in some situations outside the home, outside that protective bubble.

Q: When did you realise there was a difference between men and women?

A: I remember one particular episode that really made an impression on me. I was six years old, and I loved making things out of lego; it was my favourite toy. I was obsessed with building, and I would spend hours with my dad playing with lego. The Jumbo supermarket in Maia, my home town, held a national Lego competition. I entered and won first prize. It was amazing, but the prize was an electric racing track, with only boys in the pictures, and I was very upset about that. My father explained to me that perhaps they were expecting a boy to win. That was when I realised that there were people who differentiated between boys ‘and girls’ games.

Q: Was it by studying theatre at the Academia Contemporânea do Espetáculo that you discovered yourself as a woman?

A: I don’t think so. At that time, I was in the process of discovering what I wanted to do in life and who I really was. At ACE, I came into contact with like-minded, politicised people, and gay people. I discovered that I was from a very privileged class, and I gained this class consciousness. I was a late developer and had a very quiet adolescence. I don’t think I realised I was a woman until later, when I went to Lisbon to work as an actor and live on my own.

Q: What was that period like?

A: I was 16 and it was a shock. I realised how audiovisual media, in this case television, looks at women, how it treats them and even how it dresses them. Beauty was the gateway to a lot of things and that was the main thing that mattered. I realised that there was a hypersexualisation of women’s bodies, and it was surprising to see how television encouraged this. I’d never worn make-up before in my life; in fact, I still don’t wear make-up, and the first time I did was on television. They put gel nails on me straight away and my body changed very quickly. I remember that in the second or third soap opera I did, the costume designer gave me a huge bra that I couldn’t wear on stage. When I told her that it didn’t fit me, she apologised profusely because she thought that, like most actresses, I had silicone implants. This conformity and pressure to be all the same was very revealing.

Q: In 2019, you staged and starred in the monologue ‘Every day I get dirty from eternal things’, in which you explored the city’s placenames. You came to the conclusion that only 2.5 per cent of Porto’s streets are named after women. Did that surprise you?

A: In some ways, yes. In that show, I learnt that women have always been there, have always played their part and have always done many important and relevant things. They just haven’t done more because society hasn’t allowed them to, and the patriarchal system hasn’t allowed them to write their own history. History has always been structurally written by men, for men and from their perspective. We need to start writing our own history; we need to have bad books written by women because when a book is published by a woman it always has to be exceptional to get published. I think issues of gender and the female are things that have preoccupied me throughout my life at various times. I’ve woken up to them and they’ve taken hold of me and my artistic thinking in quite a natural way.

Q: In 2021, you worked on a female theme again: the first union for domestic service workers in Portugal, in a play called ‘A monologue between a woman called Maria and her employer’. Why?

A: When I do shows, I don’t have a militant objective; as incredible as it may seem, I don’t believe it’s going to change the world. I simply find a story, I identify with it, I can’t get it out of my head, it moves me, I realise I want to know more, and I go looking for all the information to then create the play. I’ve never done a degree. I think I invent shows so that I can have a reason to study subjects that move me and tell me something. The process of studying is the thing that excites me the most. This monologue is about a very tough and lonely struggle. It gave me a class perspective and taught me that class is something that is very deep-rooted, and that it overlaps with gender in terms of inequalities. But I don’t want to be an artist today who is categorised because she only works with women. I have to be careful not to let myself be betrayed by the causes and by what the public expects of me. When you do what the public expects of you, you can die a death; it becomes something very dangerous as an artist.

Q: In 2020, you founded Cassandra, a creative arts organisation, and a year later launched the first edition of ‘Heróides — Feminist Book Club”. How has this project grown?

A: The challenge is to read one book a month and, on the last Saturday of each month, meet in a Reading Club via Zoom, with an invited guest and the readers who want to join in. It was a project that started in the middle of the pandemic, and it still surprises me when I switch on Zoom on a Saturday morning and see people who are in Rotterdam or a small town in northern Portugal like São João da Pesqueira taking part. It’s amazing when you realise the global reach that the project has among the Portuguese diaspora. The guests are mostly women from various fields, from different geographical areas, and this diversity is, for me, also a synonym for feminism. The challenge of reading books that are not so obvious or commonplace, that take you out of your comfort zone and encourage you to look at the world from a feminist perspective, is not always easy.

Q: In the year in which Portugal celebrates 50 years of democracy, you premiered as a director with the show ‘Script for a possible country’. How is the tour of the country going?

A: Very well — we have several dates booked and already sold out. The play is based on the diaries of the Assembly of the Republic and tells the story of the last 50 years of democracy in a real journey through time, from the perspective of that place and everything which happened there.

Q: What surprised you most about this journey through time?

A: We all remember important and decisive moments such as the legalisation of abortion or marriage between gay couples, but perhaps you didn’t know that the Assembly of the Republic is a huge place where thousands of people work every day, in addition to the MPs. I also didn’t know that in 1976 the Assembly was taken over for 36 hours by a group of construction workers, who blockaded the building and wouldn’t let anyone leave until they passed a law that benefited them. There were other unusual and comical moments, and it fascinated me to find out that this is not just a place for great speeches and rhetoric. Much of what was debated there was caused by social movements. It was the demonstrations in the streets that put certain issues on the agenda, but it was also often the Assembly of the Republic that was at the forefront of society’s thinking, legislating on things that are now divisive for all of us.

Q: What worries you most today?

A: I’m very concerned about the issue of migration, which there will be big arguments about in the coming years. It’s the great crisis of our time, just like the issue of climate change.

Q: Are you today the woman you imagined yourself to be?

A: I think I’ve achieved a lot that I’ve always wanted for myself. Living in Porto, having an artistic lifestyle, working independently and having a bookshop open in the city is the fulfilment of a dream. I’m more insecure in my work, I increasingly question myself and have more doubts about what I do. I think I also let myself down more, and live more intensely. I realise that it’s more difficult to change things, and perhaps that’s why I can see myself changing professional areas more quickly. As long as it makes sense and gives me pleasure, I’ll carry on doing it, but when the pleasure isn’t enough, I can see myself becoming a bookseller, for example. Creating things can be exhausting. It forces you to give up many things, but I’m an optimist and I always have hope for the future and the collective.

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