Nàufrags is a piece of visual / puppet theatre on the theme of ‘the shipwrecked’, created by the film and stage director Lluís Danés. The last instalment in Mercat de les Flors’ innovative performance cycle Oh! Poètiques de la Il.lusió is a visually and atmospherically accomplished piece, engineered to disturb its audience with a range of cinematic devices. Billowing black bin bags, mood lighting… Read more »
Still bug-eyed and trembling after this extraordinary one-day-only encounter between the Malaga-born, National Dance Award-winning flamenco dancer Roció Molina, and the Catalan artistic / technological / performative / musical collective CaboSanRoque! In rustling robotic desert surroundings, under the blood red gaze of a wandering moon, Molina emerges from a quivering cage of erect metallic measuring tapes. Then, donning the cropped bejewelled… Read more »
Oh-my-gosh, it was indeed a Happy New Year! thanks to this blinding Catalan production of Marits i Mullers. Director Àlex Rigola’s sweet, slick, highly inventive and immensely enjoyable theatrical adaptation of Woody Allen’s 1992 movie, Husbands and Wives, was not only better than the original – kinda, but notably generous to the public. It made me think of… Read more »
Almost all hope of gender intrigue dissolved in the outdated absurdity and odd ‘masculinity’ of this Catalan-language version of a female King Lear (Rei Lear)! This not very Christmassy Shakespearean tragedy, about an old king flattered and then betrayed by his daughters, is glum enough as it is – but this was indeed a most disheartening production!… Read more »
Triple tragedy at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure this last weekend with three Greek plays in Spanish! Oedipus Rex, Antigone (both Sophocles) and Medea (Euripides), directed by Alfredo Sanzol, Miguel del Arco and Andrés Lima respectively, were Teatro de la Abadia / Teatro de la Ciudad co-productions, though I suspect the funding was not evenly distributed. They had premiered… Read more »
There’s a new art space in town! Fundació Gaspar – FREE of charge this weekend for Barcelona residents, and after which is €8 (although I promise to keep you posted on the inaugurations), bids to be ‘an international point of reference’ in the city. But, if the debut show is anything to go by, excitingly offers we Barcelona… Read more »
In the Paralympic sport goalball, two teams of visually impaired players compete to score goals by hurling a heavy ball into the opposition’s net. The sport, that originated in a rehabilitation exercise for World War II veterans, is comprised of two three-a-side teams the members of which are made equal by their wearing eye patches covered by eye masks…. Read more »
Our memories act upon us, selecting events, experiences and emotions from our lives, apparently at random; they make meanings of them, whittling them into storylines or setting out rules for living. In his one-person stage play 887 the Canadian director, actor and playwright Robert Lepage unravels such narratives, questioning the characteristics that form our identities. “I call 887… Read more »
In the beginning was the image, and the image was truth. Those were the days! Now there is no truth, only ‘truths’ negotiated between individual self-perception and social archetype, or self-perception of archetype… or something along those lines. Where that leaves the documentary photograph is one of the considerations of an excellent exhibition at Barcelona’s Caixa… Read more »
What makes Spanish art seem so expositive and yet so elusive? Does it hold the key to a better understanding of the ‘Spanish identity’? In the first of a series of profiles on Spain’s artists, I attempt to explore this and other intrigues… The artist Noé Bermejo (32) was born in a village in the municipality… Read more »
