PEOPLE WHO MAKE THEATER: Meet the Catalan Artists: Lali Álvarez, Cláudia Cedó, Anna Giribet, Ariadna Peya & Xesca Salvà: Jan 16, 2018

LALI ÁLVAREZ: I work as a playwright, poet, stage director and community-projects developer, having studied philosophy at Universitat de Barcelona and stage directing and playwriting at Institut del Teatre. I often participate in text theatre, street theatre, and in community projects, with my work revolving around social and political issues. I am the current artistic director at the HUI BASA Collective, through which I hold the resident artist position at Nau Ivanow in Barcelona. The collective is now working on Tha Zpar (The Stand Still) a street-theatre show about how we manage fear and violence, which will premiere in September 2018 at FiraTàrrega, and on Privilege, a theatre documentary about the concept of privilege, to premiere in July 2019 at the Barcelona Grec Festival. As a playwright and stage director, I have put on Ragazzo (2015) and Barcelona (against the wall) (2016), both based on true stories, and both on tour. I have been honored with various awards such as the Serra d’Or Critics Award (best show 2015 for Ragazzo) and the Recomana Critics Award (best show for young audience 2016 for Ragazzo).
www.lalialvarezgarriga.com

CLÀUDIA CEDÓ: I am a playwright and theatre director, having studied psychology and dramatic art and worked as a psychologist in prison and in a center for people with autism. Ten years ago, I decided to leave my job at the jail to start a project called Escenaris Especials (Special Stages). Now this project is a reality: we do theater with actors and actresses with disabilities, mental illness, autism, cerebral palsy, or drug addiction. Special Stages has been my university, the place where I have learned to write and direct theater. My students have taught me how to train my creativity by going to places where I would not have gone alone, writing at a table. My years in Special Stages have clearly influenced what I write, whether in terms of content or in the form of my theatrical works. In 2014, I started to write for professional companies. I have written 12 theater plays and have always directed them myself. I have also worked as a theater teacher with adolescent students and as a playwright, director, and actress for theater companies. Likewise, I worked as an actress with the Dokumentar Theater of Berlin.
www.claudiacedo.com

ANNA GIRIBET: I have a degree in economics and have worked as an economist for four years. In parallel, culture has always played a very important role in my life. Since 2008, I have been part of the artistic and production team for the theater company Dimitri Ialta. Since 2011, I work as the assistant programmer for the FiraTàrrega artistic department, a market for performing arts focused on street arts and unconventional shows. I also coordinate the Graduate Diploma in Arts Street Creation. Prior, I participated in the meetings Women and culture based in Barcelona: Women and Culture is a group of women who want to achieve gender equality in the world of culture and which encompasses women from different fields (theater, circus, music, film, visual arts, cultural management, and cultural communication, among others).

ARIADNA PEYA: I am a choreographer, dancer, teacher, and a founding member of the company Les Impuxibles. Trained in dance in Barcelona, I have taken courses with international choreographers in New York, London, Israel, Berlin, and Cuba. I enjoy different disciplines of dance and movement, which have led me to create my own language. In 2011, I founded Les Impuxibles with my sister, Clara Peya. Les Impuxibles is the artistic fusion of a pianist and a dancer—a merger that contains the power and the artistic quality of each of us separately and the harmony of the bond that unites us. We work with a mixture of languages. Our research combines music and movement with other scenic disciplines: an investigation that is never over and has led us to build our own language. Thus, we continue to focus on cooperation and alliances between creators and universes, discovering new forms of creation and furthering our work. To date, Les Impuxibles has premiered seven shows. The last one, Aüc, el so de les esquerdes, premiered at the Barcelona Grec Festival (2017), La Seca Espai Brossa, Fira Tàrrega, (currently on tour) is a joint project with the creator Carla Rovira. Les Impuxibles are currently preparing “Suite toc num 6”, which will be released in Barcelona in 2019 and staged by Judit Pujol. Our social commitment has led us to use our art as a loudspeaker for social change, positioning ourselves in a policy of equality.
http://lesimpuxibles.com/wp/

 

XESCA SALVÀ: I work as a set designer and graduated from the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona. From 2010 to 2011, I worked at Plastikart Studio (Cesena, Italy) creating and developing several projects for Societas Raffaello Sanzio-Romeo Castellucci. I am also the set designer for theater and dance companies such as La Veronal, Lali Ayguadé, Corcada Teatre, Andrés Lima and La Ruta 40. Currently, I am working on a personal project about intimacy, games, and memory: The Houses Project. With three small-scale and autonomous shows, a mixture of real voices and fictional experience becomes an intimate movie with the audience playing an active part. The project is a reflection on memory: the memory of objects and the memory of real space as an aural construction. It is also an attempt to create emotional spaces on “social interstices,” or spaces for intimate exchanges. Every experience is accompanied by the real sound of chatting and interviews with the real voices of several women: older women living alone at home, homeless women and prostitutes. I also developed a project in residence at IF Barcelona and Hangar (2016-2017) and premiered a play in TNT Terrassa and Teatre Principal de Palma.
http://projectecases.tumblr.com

 

About INSTITUT RAMON LLULL:

Institut Ramon Llull is a public consortium comprised of the Catalan Government, the Balearic Islands Government, and the City Council of Barcelona. The institute was established in 2002 with the aim of promoting Catalan language and culture abroad. Institut Ramon Lull’s work focuses on Catalan literary and scholarly works; Catalan studies in academic settings; and visual arts, architecture, design, performing arts, music, and film.

The Performing and Visual Arts Department gives wide exposure to Catalan culture through artistic events in cities around the world, promoting the presence of Catalan artists at first-rate international events featuring contemporary art and performance through specific cooperation agreements with international festivals, institutions, museums, and arts centers as well as through travel grants for artists.
www.llull.cat