Tickets for TNSJ shows aimed at young audiences are already available for the 2025/2026 season

The Teatro Nacional São João has opened ticket sales for shows aimed at young audiences for the September 2025–July 2026 season. The programme includes events aimed at children and young people of different age groups, seeking to bring young people in contact with the performing arts. Tickets are already on sale, allowing schools, families and the general public to start planning their visits to the theatre throughout the season.

This season, the TNSJ’s Educational Centre will be reinforced, with more shows intended for children and school-age young people being presented at the Teatro Carlos Aberto. Still in 2025, the TeCA will host Bonecos, a collective production presented during the Porto International Puppet Show (FIMP), on 17 and 18 October. Already in 2026, it will welcome Um Poeta em Forma de Assim – Visita guiada à cabeça de Alexandre O’Neill, a show created by Malu Vilas Boas, from 5 to 8 March, and Hamlet Sou Eu, a Teatro Praga production conceived by Cláudia Jardim, Diogo Bento and Pedro Penim, from 18 to 21 March.

Especially noteworthy among all these shows aimed at children and young people is the international production Buchettino, developed from Charles Perrault’s tale of Little Thumb. A historical show conceived for ages 8 and up, _Buchettino_ is directed by Chiara Guidi, one of the foremost European creators and theorists of children’s theatre. The Italian artist and pedagogue brings us a unique sensorial experience: the stage becomes an acoustic container with fifty beds, where the young spectators lie down to listen to a story narrated by an actress. Performed consecutively around the world for the past 30 years, Buchettino can be seen at the Teatro Carlos Alberto from 13 to 17 May. Besides presenting the production, Chiara Guidi will come to Porto to launch her book Teatro Infantil and provide guidance for the Arte e Educação seminar, on 15 and 16 May, at the TeCA.

The Teatro Nacional São João’s three new in-house productions are also designed for school audiences, primarily because they seek to bring Portuguese language and literature to the stage. This season, the TNSJ will give physical shape to the words of two writers and journalists: Porto native Manuel António Pina and Nelson Rodrigues, from Brazil.

Inventão is the working title of a show based on the work of Manuel António Pina (1943-2012), which uses his plays, poems and newspaper columns to build an (en)chanted universe, staged by the director and choreographer Victor Hugo Pontes and scored by A Garota Não, one of the most vibrant names of Portuguese contemporary pop music, who makes her performing arts debut here. Inventão is a musical stage show that celebrates the topsy-turvy world of one of our greatest poets, who is also the author of the most prolific and crucial set of plays for young audiences in the history of Portuguese theatre. Aimed at ages 10 and up, it will run for a month, from 12 March to 12 April, at the TNSJ.

O Beijo no Asfalto (1960) brings the Brazilian playwright Nelson Rodrigues’ provocative and polemical creation to the stage. Miguel Loureiro’s staging of this “Rio de Janeiro tragedy” maintains the sounds and construction of Brazilian Portuguese, by using a group of Brazilian actors and actresses who reside in Portugal. Running from 18 June to 5 July, _O Beijo no Asfalto_ will  bring the TNSJ season to a close.

Early on, in November, the TNSJ will premiere its first in-house production of the 2025/2026 season. After a seven-year absence, director Nuno Carinhas returns to the Teatro Nacional São João to stage Branca de Neve & Outros Dramalhetes, a production based on three dramatic poems by the Swiss author Robert Walser: Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The show, aimed at ages 12 and up, will run at the Teatro São João from 20 November to 14 December.

Besides our in-house productions, our programming for children and young people also includes Maria João Vicente’s stage adaptation of Camilo Castelo Branco’s novel Amor de Perdição, which will return to the TeCA in 2026, from 12 to 22 February. Daniela Cruz and Nuno Preto’s Lugares Invisíveis will also return to the TNSJ backstage areas from 30 May to 1 June. The eighth edition of Visitações, the flagship project of our Educational Centre, will during this season focus on Manuel António Pina’s dramatic and poetic oeuvre, under the guidance of Manuel Tur.

Tickets for the TNSJ productions aimed at children and young people during the 2025/2026 season can be purchased at the Teatro São João and Teatro Carlos Alberto ticket offices, or online at tnsj.bol.pt.