Download the Portuguese version of the poster.
UBC’s Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies (FHIS) and the Consulate General of Portugal in Vancouver are collaborating to organize a seminar with the Portuguese-Canadian writer and playwright Elaine Ávila, dedicated to Fado, the popular urban music of Portugal.
Fado is a musical genre encompassing music and poetry, widely practiced by diverse communities, notably in Lisbon. It represents a multicultural synthesis of Afro-Brazilian sung dances, traditional local genres of song and dance, musical traditions from rural areas of the country brought by successive waves of internal migration, and the cosmopolitan patterns of urban music from the early 19th century. In 2011, Fado was declared by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
About the presentation
Acclaimed Portuguese Canadian playwright Elaine Ávila is known for her sold out hit play, Fado: The Saddest Music in the World. A tale of love and ghosts set in the back alleys and brothels of old Lisbon, it tells the story of a young woman confronting her country’s fascist past and her own identity, interwoven with the heartbreaking national music of Portugal known as Fado, which means “fate.”
In her talk, Elaine will discuss fado music as emblematically Portuguese, world heritage, transversal throughout the diaspora, fascist propaganda and resistance to fascism.
The seminar will be followed by a debate.
This event will be held mostly in English and is open to the public, bringing together students from Portuguese language courses, teachers, academics, and members of the Lusophone communities in Vancouver.
About the presenter
Photo (foto): Derek Ford
Elaine Ávila (she/her), of Azorean descent, was one of the first Fulbright Portugal Scholars at the University of the Azores. Elaine writes plays based on untold, true stories of women, workers, Portuguese immigrants and the climate crisis, incorporating humour and music. Elaine is described as “a wonderful writer, tremendously gifted, and innovative” (Suzan-Lori Parks), “fully engaged with the immense political, cultural, and aesthetic complexity of fado’s history” (Jeff Parker); her writing as “gorgeous…a piercing cry to the soul” (Katherine Vaz) and “bold, intelligent, forthright, spirited, compassionate…inviting, wide-ranging” (Caridad Svich). Her plays have been produced in over forty cities/countries, including: Panamá City, Sintra, Pico, Costa Rica, Paris, Peru, London, New York, Lisbon, Australia, Los Angeles, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Victoria. Best New Play Awards include: Jane Austen, Action Figure (Festival de los Cocos, Panamá City), Lieutenant Nun (Victoria Critics Circle), and Café a Brasileira (Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon). Her books are available from NoPassport Press and Talonbooks. She has taught in universities from Portugal to lutruwita (Tasmania), China to Panamá. Currently on the Creative Writing Faculty at Douglas College, she is the founder of the LEAP Playwriting Program at the Arts Club (the largest theatre in Canada) and co-founder of the International Climate Change Theatre Action, now reaching 75,000 audience members worldwide. She is currently under commission from the Lortel Theatre in New York, a landmark off Broadway theatre, to write her new play about the first female professor at the University of Minnesota, who founded a remote research station at li:xwa:p/Botanical Beach, BC enabling her to be the leading expert on seaweed, which has astonishing potential to help mitigate the climate crisis.
RSVP
The promotion of Portuguese language and Lusophone studies is one of the central objectives of the MoU between the Camões Institute and the University of British Columbia (UBC), signed in 2022 and renewed in 2025.
