Life of Jorge Silva Melo is made up of farewells and returns. Lisbon born and bred, he became ‘foreignised’ early on. He studied at the London Film School and in the great centres of European theatre. He trained in Berlin with Peter Stein and in Milan – at the Piccolo Teatro and La Scala – with Giorgio Strehler. He lived in Paris, where he worked with Jean Jourdheuil. In 1973, he founded the Teatro da Cornucópia, together with Luís Miguel Cintra and left after six years, emigrating soon after. He spent the 1980s working with the best in European theatre and only returned to Portugal in the 1990s. In 1995 he founded a theatre collective, Artistas Unidos, and forged new paths in Portuguese theatre.