The judges at Jocs Florals d’Olot in 1898 reacted in shock when they discovered the author of the prize-winning short story Infanticide was in fact a woman, Catalina Albert i Paradis. It was simply unheard of that one of youth and privilege from the pretty L’Escala in coastal Empordà (Catalonia) could be capable of broaching… 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 »
The Teatre Nacional de Catalunya launched its new season in dramatic weather last Saturday which seemed generated for the occasion. The theatre’s pledge to open ‘a gateway to the world’ – written in bold deep-blue letters across the entrance – gave way into something more ambitious and self-aware: that vast spacey lobby that you feel… Read more »
In this fabulously intense and manipulative Spanish-language drama by Franco-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco, Martín, a young man who has murdered his father, becomes a material resource for S, an earnest if smug playwright-professor. The latter wants to make a play about parricide, a modern theatrical take on the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex; the former is… Read more »
In this entertaining homage to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a team of Catalan multidisciplinary creators have adjusted the plot of the 1818 original to present an atmospheric if ‘diet’ version of the tale. A Wagneresque soundtrack and enigmatic images of the natural world provide the scenery for the story of mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein, who, in… Read more »
