TEP is one of the longest-running professional Portuguese theater companies in Portugal. They premiered their first show in 1953 and continue their history. António Pedro (1953 - 1961) was the first artistic director to change the way of doing theater in Portugal, operating a new aesthetic revolution, with the introduction of modern staging. He has been followed by leading figures in theater, visual arts, music, literature, cinema, and thought, who shaped the Teatro Experimental do Porto (TEP) and the association that manages it, the Círculo de Cultura Teatral (Circle of Theatrical Culture).

Throughout these 70 years, some of the most charismatic figures of the Portuguese culture have been represented and works of the main national and foreign authors have been performed.

TEP is a resident structure at the Teatro Campo Alegre, within the scope of the Teatro em Campo Aberto program and supported by the Oporto City Council.

To this day, Teatro la María has staged eighteen productions including, among others, El apocalipsis de mi vida, Trauma, Pelícano, El Rufián en la Escalera, Superhéroes, La Tercera Obra, Las Huachas, Persiguiendo a Nora Helmer and "Los Millonarios”, summoning for each work different artists with whom it has established a fertile artistic collaboration.

They have been invited to participate on different occasions in Chilean Shows and Festivals, such as the Muestra Nacional de Dramaturgia, European Dramaturgia, and North American Dramaturgy Festival, among others; while they have participated in international Festivals and stages with La Tercera Obra (presentations in France and Italy, in 2006 and 2007), Persiguiendo a Nora Helmer (presentations in Tokyo in 2013) and Los Millonarios (Festival Sala de Parto. Lima-Peru 2015).

Throughout 15 years of uninterrupted work, they have developed their own scenic poetics, where they conceive theatrical creation as the relationship between different universes and narrative layers, where the word, the acting work, the visuality, the aesthetic, and political options work in deep dialogue and tension, forming a scenic fabric that seeks to address certain issues, both in terms of content and in terms of scenery. The concepts of homeland, identity, violence, and failure have intruded in one way or another in all their productions. They seek to reflect on the country, condensing, through the staging, fragments of the national reality.