In search of resistance and rebellion in São Tomé & Príncipe’s street theatre culture

From the very start of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, enslaved Africans outwitted and escaped the Spanish Conquistadors. Cimarrón, they were called; ​“wild and unruly” equated with ​“runaway slave”. The French remade it as Marron; ​“feral” mapped on top of ​“fugitive”. From here, the English reduced the word to Maroon, quickly reimagining it as a verb to describe being stranded and abandoned in a remote place.

But Maroons themselves proved such projections were nothing more than the mark of craven minds. From the turn of the 1500s, they forged new communities, building bands that could defend against colonist attacks, while surviving off the land in inhospitable, inaccessible locales where they would not easily be found. 

Theirs are cultures and histories weaved of by people and place, which photographer Nicola Lo Calzo has been mapping across memory, rebellion, and resistance since 2010. ​“Photography is my way of interacting with the world, a way to connect and relate,” Lo Calzo says. ​“As a queer person, it has been for me a form of refuge; a space where I can affirm my identity through new relationships and connections. Most of my photographs are based on relationships – vulnerable, certainly, but genuine – with the people I photograph.” 

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For Lo Calzo, liberation is predicated on rejecting assigned status and creating a refuge to imagine new paradigms of community and self. ​“When I speak of memories of resistance, I refer to a system of living cultural and spiritual practices developed during the colonial period to counter the dehumanisation of slavery, in the frame of marronnage,” Lo Calzo says. ​“These practices persist today within Afro-descendant communities across the Atlantic world. They reactivate the memory of slavery’s violence, but they also stand as affirmations of freedom and resistance against systems of domination that remain active.” 

With his newest monograph, Tragédia (L’Artiere Edizioni) set for publication in September, Lo Calzo explores tragédia, the form of street theatre found in São Tomé and Príncipe – once uninhabited islands in the Gulf of Guinea annexed by Portugal in the early 1470s. Set just off the west coast of central Africa, the strategic location quickly became a major slave trade depot and plantation economy, dominating cocoa production to earn the name Chocolate Islands. By the 1530s, Maroon platoons led liberation movements against the invaders, sparking decades of rebellion and war, while the plantation system ran unabated. 

“It is precisely here that both the plantation economy and the enslavement of sub-Saharan populations are systematised, before being exported to the Americas,” Lo Calzo says. ​“The archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe is today considered the scene of the first most ​‘rational’ experiment in extensive plantations, based on a racial organisation of work, of which African and Creole enslaved people constitute the main labour force. São Tomé offers a glimpse into what the American world would come to represent over the following four centuries – a laboratory of colonial exploitation, racial hierarchies, and resistance.” 

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It wasn’t until July 12, 1975, that Sao Tomé and Principe finally achieved independence from Portugal, with control of the plantations passed to the state control. Half a century later, the nation of around 200,000 inhabitants is politically and economically stable, with its people continuing to build from the scarred historical legacy of colonisation and imperialism. 

With Tragédia, Lo Calzo weaves a majestic tapestry across time, blending portrait, landscape, still life, reportage, architectural and interior photography, archival images and oral testimonies, into a hypnotic look at the form of street theatre that bears its name. Fusing Creole, African, and European influences to re-enact historical events and , tragédia performance recounts stories of oppression, struggle, and triumph.

“Working with memory-based practices like Tchiloli, Danco Congo, and other forms of tragédia, requires a collaborative approach with the performers and local communities,” Lo Calzo says. ​“Often, I find myself more interested in what happens around the performance than in the performance itself. It is on the periphery of the stage space, that the most powerful images often emerge. What matters most is trying to convey the richness and complexity of this unique form of theatre in Africa, through images in which the photographed people can recognise themselves.”

Tragédia by Nicola Lo Calzo will be published by L’Artiere Edizioni on September 9, 2025. Pre-order the book here.

Miss Rosen is a free­lance arts and pho­tog­ra­phy writer, fol­low her on X.

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