Shakespeare Festival Barcelona - Prelude Edition

While we plan the Shakespeare Festival Barcelona with the intention of launching it in the season 26-27, we want to celebrate a Prelude Edition this march, to start gathering, building connections, testing formats, and bringing together artists and audiences. Four days of programming to collectively imagine the festival we are creating.

We want to resume this international theater festival, with the collaboration of the European Shakespeare Festivals Network. A cultural festival where various languages and artistic disciplines come together around the figure of William Shakespeare. His works have become a common language between cultures; and we speak to the world through them.

Check the full schedule here

Day 1: Sunday, March 16th

6:00 PM - A Macbeth Song. Teatre La Biblioteca. 

Directed and adapted by Oriol Broggi with The Tiger Lillies
A contemporary interpretation of Macbeth, combining Oriol Broggi's theatrical direction with the unique live music of The Tiger Lillies.

8.30 PM - Conversation: Current visions on Shakespeare. Teatre La Biblioteca. 

Inscriptions here
With Irina Brook (Dream Theatre) and Oriol Broggi (La Perla 29)
Irina Brook and Oriol Broggi will share their experiences directing Shakespeare and recalling productions that have particularly influenced them. How do they approach the playwright? What inspires them? What are they looking for in his work? A conversation between two renowned theatre directors who have found in Shakespeare a unique poetic universe full of life and theatre. 

9.30 PM - Welcome snack

Day 2: Monday, March 17th
 

10.30 AM - Internal Meeting of the ESFN. Sala Noble, Institut Ramon Llull.
Internal meeting of the European Shakespeare Festivals Network (ESFN).

4:30 PM - Session: Imagining the New Shakespeare Festival of Barcelona. Teatre La Biblioteca.

With national and international programmers and cultural agents. Private session.
A collaborative work session to share ideas about the future Shakespeare Festival of Barcelona. Several cultural agents from the country, along with programmers from Shakespeare Festivals across Europe, will discuss programming interests and share what needs and opportunities can be channeled into the future Festival to make it a citywide project.

7.00 PM - Public Presentation of the ESFN in Barcelona. Teatre La Biblioteca.

Inscriptions here
With Joanna Śnieżko (PL), Philip Parr (UK) and Vlad Drăgulescu (RO) 
What is the European Shakespeare Festivals Network (ESFN)? How is Shakespeare programmed in different European countries? How do they engage with the author? What scenic languages are they developing? We will talk with several ESFN programmers to share different cultural contexts, connect them with Catalonia, and explore the international network.

8:15 PM - Hamlet Double Bill. Teatre La Biblioteca.

Buy tickets here
Selected Show of Shakesphere 2024
La Ribalta Teatro (IT) and the English Theater Company present a version of Hamlet with three actors who give voice to the characters of the gravediggers and comedians who must confront this tragedy.

Day 3: Tuesday, March 18
 

11:00 AM - Conversation: Shakespeare, Tyranny, and Truth. Sala del Mirador, CCCB.

Inscriptions here
With Jordi Coca, Andreu Jaume, Isabel Guerrero
Organised with #AsSocPerla and the Institute of Humanities of Barcelona.
Lies, fake news, corruption, hierarchical power structures, public frustrations… This is not a diagnosis of the present day, but a series of themes deeply embedded in the works of William Shakespeare. His theatre offers striking portrayals of tyrants and tyranny. How does the author depict them? How does he explain them? How are they challenged? Macbeth, Coriolanus, Richard III… In what context were they written? What contexts do they speak to today? We will discuss Shakespeare’s tyrants—childish yet dangerous figures who exist both within and beyond the fictional walls of the theatre. 

5:30 PM - Shakespeare, violence and war. A Coffee with... Teatre La Biblioteca.

Inscriptions here
Iryna Chuzhynova (Shakespeare Festival of Ukraine) and Andrea Jiménez (Casting Lear). Moderates: Cristina Genebat.
When we met Iryna in Craiova (Romania), we were impressed by the clarity with which she articulated the contradictions faced by a team in Ukraine launching a Shakespeare Festival amid war: "Art, theatre, when it comes down to it, cannot save lives." Her questions are also ours. We must make the effort to translate experiences, and theatre helps us to do just that. But the world Shakespeare portrays is often deeply warlike and masculine. What Shakespeare does an audience overwhelmed by immediate violence need? To what extent can he help us imagine alternatives? What identities and silences do we bring to the stage? And what kind of relationship do we want to have with Shakespeare? 

8.00 PM - A Macbeth Song. Teatre La Biblioteca. 

Directed and adapted by Oriol Broggi with The Tiger Lillies.
A contemporary interpretation of Macbeth, combining Oriol Broggi's theatrical direction with the unique live music of The Tiger Lillies.

* All activities with international speakers will have simultaneous translation.