Ilhas Studio — Luís Miguel Cintra: Pequeno Teatro do Mundo

Design for the book published in the context of the exhibition Luís Miguel Cintra: Pequeno Teatro do Mundo (Luís Miguel Cintra: Small Theatre of the World).

In July 2025, Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira at Serralves, Porto, presented the exhibition Luís Miguel Cintra: Pequeno Teatro do Mundo, dedicated to one of Portugal’s most influential figures in theatre and cinema. The exhibition brought together several hundred religious, sacred, and pagan figures from diverse origins, objects that inhabit the actor’s home and quietly accompany his life.

Drawing from this unexpected constellation of sculptural figures, the book was conceived as a gateway into a deeply personal universe where art, memory, and theatre converge. More than a collection of texts and images, it is shaped as an altar: a small oratory in which domestic scenography coexists with hundreds of figures that become silent characters, joined by interviews, recollections, and testimonies. It is a book imagined as an intimate theatre and a theatre of intimacy.

A cut-out on the cover, echoed throughout the pages, offers a first glimpse into Luís Miguel Cintra’s world. Like a window that both reveals and conceals, it invites the reader to cross the threshold of his home and his memories, moving through the rooms of a life shaped by performance.

Photographs from legendary film shoots with Manoel de Oliveira and from historic stage productions unfold within this oratory-book, revealing the actor in all his polysemy—many roles, many presences, gathered into a single, quiet theatre.