Jeanette Winterson is the Lancashire-raised author of some three-dozen books, from the 1980’s classic Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit to the timely 12 Bytes (2021). Her latest Night Side of the River (October 2023) is a book of 13 original ghost stories told with a signature autobiographical twist. Technical innovation haunts the pieces, as… Read more »
When the prestigious choreographer Marta Carrasco convinced Albert Hurtado, the charismatic zumba teacher at her local gym to cross-dress before a live audience at the TNC, how could he refuse? The result, the breezy performance piece Jo, dona. A Lili Elbe., a heartfelt tribute to Lili Elbe: a Danish landscape painter and transgender woman, and… Read more »
Amidst the chaos: injustices, strikes, rabid press reports, soaring temperatures and prices, it’s hard to know what to do with the kids. Do we take them to the aquarium (of dubious ethics), the zoo (worse), a football match (potentially inciting a negative spirit of rivalry), or leave them locked in their rooms to play violent… Read more »
Minefield / Campo Minado is a bilingual theatre piece that reunites Argentine and British veterans from the Falklands/Malvinas war nearly four decades on. The production premiered in London in 2016 in the run up to the Brexit referendum. Looking for Drama spoke to its creator, Lola Arias, about the project, its impact and its relevance… Read more »
Immersive theatre creates a world in a set space, in which audiences are invited to experience a three-dimensional fiction meticulously created and controlled by invisible puppet masters. Interactive theatre, on the other hand, is rough and ready – the city itself becomes a backdrop and a protagonist in an unfolding drama, and the audience directly… Read more »
In a 2015 British production of La Mère, a contemporary French play by Florian Zeller, actress Gina McKee appeared ‘ghost-like’ in the lead (The Guardian). In the Catalan-language production La Mare, a local version of the play directed by Andrés Lima, Emma Vilarasau (pictured above) takes on the complex role of Anne, a mother in her 50s who suffers a… Read more »
Sci-fi thriller The Nether (L’inframón), by American playwright Jennifer Haley, is back at Teatre Lliure in Gràcia this autumn after a spell at the Grec Festival in July. The contemporary play, brought to the Catalan stage under the direction of Juan Carlos Martel Bayod, deals with portentous, worrying themes; questioning the sanctity of the virtual realm as a ‘safe… Read more »
The award-winning South African performance artist and choreographer Mamela Nyamza is the solo dancer in Hatched 2015, a three-screen film installation that she co-directs with the video artist and painter Robyn Denny. The piece is on display at Madrid’s SlowTrack Gallery (9th June to 15th July) in an exhibition curated by Beathur Mgoza Baker, that… Read more »
A satirical theatre production at Madrid’s Teatro del Barrio (6th April – 22nd June 2016) interrogates the role and reputation of the King of Spain as the country’s head of state and its military. The monarch in play is the now 78-year-old Juan Carlos I, who first set foot in Spain at the age of 10,… Read more »
Mario Gas, one of Spain’s best-known directors and Eduardo Mendoza, one of the country’s best-known authors, bring their brains together for this pop-up theatre production of Harold Pinter’s lesser-known black comedy The Hothouse (Invernadero), at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure until February 21st, 2016. This comic, tragic, macabre play is set in a government-approved institution where countless ‘residents’ are numbered rather… Read more »
