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28.05.2024

Trip to Craiova

We went to Craiova (Romania) for the Shakespeare Festival, which is held biannually in the city and is one of the largest in Europe. At La Perla 29, we are working on internationalizing the company, both by exporting Catalan theater abroad and by fostering cross-border exchanges at the Teatre La Biblioteca. It is with this spirit that we are preparing to relaunch the Shakespeare Festival in Catalonia, which had already held eleven editions until 2015, in Santa Susanna, Mataró, and Barcelona.

In Craiova, we had the opportunity to see firsthand how the festival operates there, how it is organized, and how they have managed over the years to make it a significant event for companies from around the world. It also helped us start envisioning our festival, the projects that could be part of it, and to reflect on why it is important to celebrate a Shakespeare Festival in Catalonia. We considered how La Perla 29 could make it unique, based on the company’s experience, what kind of connection we would like it to have with the city, and with diverse artistic and cultural projects in our country.

We received a warm welcome from the members of the European Shakespeare Festivals Network (ESFN), which spans 12 countries across the continent. They held their annual meeting in Craiova, where we attended to present our intentions of reviving our festival. They applauded the decision to restart this event, which had once become the reference point for Southern Europe, and they unanimously approved its inclusion in the Network. We also decided to participate in one of the shared projects, ShakesPheare, which coordinates international tours of new productions by emerging artists.

As we advance in La Perla's international project, we realize the importance of trusting the process. Investing effort into understanding other realities, learning how culture is organized in other countries, contrasting the visions of artists and cultural managers in contexts different from our own—this all broadens our perspective, makes us more imaginative, connects us personally with people from other theatres and companies, and it is through these connections and personal impulses that collaborations and exchanges can take place.

We want to share with you a series of questions and ideas posed by the team that is launching a new Shakespeare Festival in Ukraine, and we invite you to reflect on them as well:

 

"Right now, the war is the most prominent issue in Ukraine; such a war is the expression of a patriarchal system, with all its violence and aggression. How can we create a festival that is not patriarchal with Shakespeare?" (Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Lear, Richards…)
"Our audience is traumatized by the war; how can we speak to them? How do we address a traumatized audience? What are the traumas of our audience? How can we communicate with them?"
"Now, in the midst of the war we are living through, we realize that many companies and theaters are producing works that draw from Ukrainian theater in its origins, forms, and themes. Perhaps we need to rethink this human story, this story we have been telling ourselves for a long time, which is now at risk of collapsing."
"Theatre is a place where we come together and play together, regardless of the circumstances. I remember that in the theater of a Ukrainian village, there was a play for children, and they entered through the aisles in silence, calm, and stillness; but they left playing, shouting, running, and chasing each other. That play burst through something entrenched, a sadness, a lack of play and life."

And then someone in the audience exclaimed, "Theatre is here!"

“THEATRE IS HERE!”