Third edition. July 2021, Teatre Lliure, Barcelona. Spain.
We couldn’t be happier, more blessed or fortunate to have made this edition possible, both physical and online. We had a great time, amazing sessions, wonderful guest artists and we do hope this edition fulfilled the aim of the DLM in general, that is all about connecting people and cultures.
LAB PARTICIPANTS
IN PRESENCE:
Brian Bell
Antonia Georgieva
Sarah Taibah
Simone Tetrault
Aida Rocci
Joele Anastasi
Alessandro Businaro
Andrea Ferran
SPECIAL GUESTS
KATIE MITCHELL
We have been honored to share our first invited guests of the lab, Katie Mitchell.
Katie Mitchell has directed over 100 productions in a career spanning 30 years. She directs mainstream text-based theatre, opera, and live cinema productions (a unique combination of video and theatre techniques). In the UK she has directed 9 productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, 19 for the National Theatre and 12 for The Royal Court – and she has been an Associate Director at all three organisations. In opera she has directed for English National Opera, Glyndebourne Opera, Welsh National Opera, and the Royal Opera House. Since 2008 she has split her time between working in the UK and on mainland Europe in countries including Germany, France, Holland, and Scandinavia. She is currently a resident director at the Schaubuhne (Berlin), the Deutsches Schauspielhaus (Hamburg) and she has just finished a seven-year residency at the Aix-en-Provence Festival (France). In 2015 the Stadsschouwburg Theatre in Amsterdam hosted a retrospective of her work, presenting 8 productions from across Europe.
Her many awards in the UK include 2 Time Out Awards (1990 & 1991), The Evening Standard Best Director Award (1996) and a Tonic Award for her representations of woman and nurture of female talent (2018). Her awards in Europe and beyond include 3 Theatertreffen prizes (Germany) in 2008 & 2009, an Obie Award (US) in 2009, 2 Golden Mask Awards (Russia) in 2011 & 2019, the Stanislavsky Internation Prize (Russia) in 2014, The New Theatrical Realities, Europe Prize in 2014, Best Director for 2019 at the International Opera Awards. She was presented with the Order of the British Empire (OBE) 2009 and the British Academy’s President’s Medal in 2017 for her services to theatre. She is currently a Professor in Theatre Directing at Royal Holloway University where teaches on an MA directing course. Her other academic roles include Visiting Professor of Opera at Oxford University in 2017, Visiting Fellow at Central St Martin’s 2016 – 2018 and an Honorary Fellow at Rose Bruford College, 2014. She is currently a Cultural Fellow at Kings College, London, the TORCH Visiting Fellow in Theatre at Oxford University and Visiting Lecturer at Columbia University, New York.
CESC CASADESUS
Cesc Casadesús, the artistic director of Grec Festival de Barcelona shared with us a conversation about the festival and the city, as well as his position as artistic director.
Grec Festival is one of the biggest theater festivals in Spain. It has a great impact in Barcelona, with more than a 100 shows in more than 50 venues around the city.
It gathers theatre, dance, music, circus performances as well as hybrid performances.
It has become within the years an important engine for the theatre season in Barcelona.
This year edition ws inspired by Africa, continuing the world trip that has been doing the festival for the past years. We leave you the link of the festival to check.
LUCIA MIRANDA AND MAELLE POESY
An actress and director, Maëlle Poésy as a director of Crossroad Company has explored what she calls a “theatre of confrontation” revolving around movement, a “rhythm factory” which questions society and its individual components. As a director, she has directed Purgatoire à Ingolstadt, Candide Si c’est ça le meilleur des mondes… Voltaire’s adaptation written by Kenvin Keiss. In 2016, she adapted and directed two Chekhov plays for the Comédie Franchise. She was invited for the aperture of the 70th Avignon International Festival, Ceux qui errent ne se trompent pas written by author Kevin Keiss. In 2017, she directed Glück’s opera Orphée et Eurydice, in the L’Opéra de Dijon, France.
Lucia Miranda, Stage director, cultural manager, playwright and art educator. She is the founder of The Cross Border Project, a project that works at the intersection of the performing arts and education, and co-founder of the international collective País Clandestino.
As a playwright, she has published Nora, 1959, (Autores en el Centro, CDN); Fiesta, Fiesta, Fiesta (INAEM’s 5th Contemporary Playwriting Program) and Alicias buscan Maravillas (SGAE’s 5th Theater Writing Laboratory). She co-wrote País Clandestino, which was performed at the FIBA of Chile, Argentina, the Dijon Theatre in May Festival, MIT Sao Paulo, Almada International Theatre Festival (Lisbon) and Uruguay’s FIDAE. Her texts have been staged in Bolivia, the United States and Russia.
Her shows have been premiered at the Thalia Theater in New York, the Sánchez Aguilar Theater in Ecuador, Microtheater Miami and the Centro Dramático Nacional in Spain, among others.
PABLO MESSIEZ
Pablo Messiez, Spanish dramaturg and director, shared a workshop at the lab.
Pablo Messiez made his debut in 2007 as dramaturg and director of Antes, a very free version of The Member of the Wedding, by Carson McCullers. At that time, Messiez already had over 20 years of experience on the stages as an actor, taking part in, among others, the show Un hombre que se ahoga by Daniel Veronese (a version of Anton Chekhov’s play Three Sisters).
In 2010 he premiered Muda (a play he authored which ran for two seasons at the Teatro Pradillo in Madrid). The Teatro Fernán Gómez selected him to inaugurate its new Sala Dos and he produced Ahora in January 2011. On that same day, he premiered Los ojos, a new work which he authored. In 2012, at the Festival de Otoño en Primavera, he premiered Las criadas, an adaptation of the classic The Maids by Jean Genet, and he also took to the stage Las plantas for the first edition of Fringe Madrid.
In 2013, he premiered at the Festival de Otoño en Primavera, Las palabras. In 2014 he created, as a commission for the International Festival of Classical Theatre of Almagro, Los brillantes empeños, based on texts from Spain’s Golden Age. In 2015 he directed La piedra oscura by Alberto Conejero (for which he received the Max Prize for the best director and the best show) and premiered his text Los bichos. One year later, he premiered La distancia, a stage version of the novel Distancia de rescate by Samanta Schweblin, and two of his own texts: Ningún aire de ningún sitio and Todo el tiempo del mundo.
In 2018 for the Kompanyia Lliure he wrote and directed El temps que estiguem junts, which he premiered at the Teatre Lliure (Young Critics’ Award – Jury’s Award for New Voices 2018) and was nominated for the Valle Inclán Awards for his production of He nacido para verte sonreír. That same year, he premiered at the Teatro San Martin in Buenos Aires the stage version of Cae la noche tropical by Manuel Puig.
In 2019, he was invited by the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid to direct its version of La verbena de la Paloma and that same year he wrote and directed Las Canciones. His latest production to date was Los días felices by Samuel Beckett for the Centro Dramático Nacional.
PETER BROOK
Mr. Peter Brook, after knowing that these was a group of young international directors who were participating in a directors lab at Teatre Lliure (where his new production “The Tempest” is underway) wanted to organize a meeting. He came to DLM to talk and share knowledge with us. An unforgettable hour-long talk with one of the greatest theatre artists of our time.
Peter Brook was born in London in 1925. Throughout his career he has distinguished himself in different genres: theatre, opera, cinema and writing.He has staged many plays, mostly by Shakespeare for the Royal Shakespeare Company, such as Love Labour’s Lost (1946), Measure for Measure (1950), Titus Andronicus (1955), King Lear (1962), Marat/Sade (1964), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970) and Antony and Cleopatra (1978).In 1971, Peter Brook founded the International Centre for Theatrical Research (CIRT) in Paris, which, with the opening of the Bouffes du Nord became the International Centre for Theatrical Creation (CICT). His productions stand out by their iconoclastic aspects and their international stature: Timon of Athens (1974), The Iks (1975), The Bone (1979), The Mahabharata (1985), The Cherry Orchard (1989), Woza Albert! (1989), The Tempest (1990), The Man who (1993), Who’s there? (1995), Oh! Les Beaux Jours (1995), I am a Phenomenon (1998), Le Costume (1999), The Tragedy of Hamlet (2000), Far Away (2002), Krishna’s Death (2002), Your Hand in Mine (2003), Tierno Bokar (2004), The Grand Inquisitor (2005), Sizwe Banzi is dead (2006), Fragments by Samuel Beckett (2007), Eleven and Twelve after Amadou Hampaté Ba (2009) and The Suit (the English and musical version of Le Costume, 2012).He has directed several operas: La Bohème (1948), Boris Godunov (1948), Les Olympes (1949), Salomé (1949) and The Marriage of Figaro (1949) at the London Covent Garden (United Kingdom), Faust (1953), Eugene Onegin (1957) at the New York Metropolitan (United States), The Tragedy of Carmen (1981) and Impressions of Pelleas (1992) at Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, and Don Giovanni (1998) for the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.With Marie-Hélène Estienne and Franck Krawczyk, he produced A Magic Flute after Mozart and Schikaneder as part of the Festival d’Automne in Paris (2010), The Valley of Astonishment (2013) and Battlefield (2015), all at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord theatre.His major books are The Empty Space (1968), Points de Suspension (1987), Boredom is the Devil (1991), With Shakespeare (1998), To forget the Time (2003), With Grotowski (2009) and The Quality of Forgiving (2014).Peter Brook also directed films Moderato Cantabile (1959), His Majesty of the Flies (1963), Marat/Sade (1967) and The Tragedy of Hamlet (2002).
MOHAMED EL KHATIB
The author, director and producer, Mohamed El Khatib.
Mohamed El Khatib develops unique documentary fiction projects in the field of performance, literature and cinema. Through intimate epics, he takes turns inviting a farmer, a housewife, or sailors to share with him the authorship of the writing of the present time. After ‘Moi, ‘Corinne Dadat’ (2015), in where he proposed a working lady and a classical dancer to review their skills, he continued his exploration of the working class with the monumental work ‘STADIUM’ (2017), in which he brought 58 fans of the Lens Racing Club to the stage.Mohamed El Khatib won the Grand Prize for Dramatic Literature in 2016 with the play ‘Finir en beauté’, which deals with the end of his mother’s life. His text ‘C’est la vie’ (2017), awarded by the French Academy, completes this cycle on the issue of mourning and shows that a comedy is just a tragedy with a little distance… Finally, after having mounted a ‘Dispute’ (2018) singular, in cinema addresses the issue of heritage with his latest film, ‘Renault 12’ (2019), a road movie between Orleans and Tangier.Mohamed El Khatib is an artist linked to the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, the Théâtre National de Bretagne and Malraux – Scène nationale de Chambéry.
SIMON STEPHENS
A great writing practical session with Simon Stephens !
Simon Stephens’ plays Fortune, Light Falls, Maria, Fatherland, Rage, Heisenberg, Nuclear War, Song from Far Away; Birdland, Carmen Disruption, Blindsided, Morning, Three Kingdoms, Wastwater, Punk Rock, The Trial of Ubu, Marine Parade, Sea Wall, Harper Regan, Pornography, Motortown, On the Shore of the Wide World, One Minute, Country Music, Christmas, Port, Herons and Bluebird have been translated into more than 20 languages and produced all over the world. He has written English language versions of Jon Fosse’s I Am the Wind; Odon Von Horvath’s Kasimir and Karoline (titled The Funfair); Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House; Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull and Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera. He has adapted Jose Saramago’s Blindness and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime for stage. He has presented four series of the Royal Court Playwright’s Podcast. His book “A Working Diary” is published by Methuen. Simon Stephens has been an Associate at the Royal Court, London and Steep, Chicago and a board member of Paines Plough. He is a Professor of Scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University and an Associate Professor at the Danish National School of the Performing Arts, Copenhagen.
CARLOTA SUBIROS
DLM’s latest special guest for this year’s edition is director Carlota Subirós who shared a three-hour theoretical and practical session on research and the method of Viewpoints, developed by American director Anne Bogart.
Theatre director and translator. She studied directing and dramaturgy at the Institut del Teatre, Barcelona and Italian Philology at UB, Barcelona.In 1999, Oriol Broggi and Carlota Subirós founded of ‘La Perla 29 Company’. Between 2003 and 2011 she was a member of Teatre Lliure’s Artisitic Directing team. She has collaborated on the TV program ‘L’hora del lector’, and has worked with several choreographers and dance companies, such as Mal pelo, Amèlia Boluda and the Ballet Contemporani de Barcelona. Since 2013 she has been a member of the Reading Committee of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and a teacher in Institut del Teatre de Barcelona in the Department of Staging, Dramaturgy and Choreography. He is also engaged in artistic and academic research. As a director, from 1990 to 1996 she worked as an assistant director to artists as Peter Sellars, Franco di Francescantonio, Joan Ollé, Ariel Garcia Valdés o Lluís Homar. In 1996 she directed Ionesco’s ‘The Lesson’, since then she has directed more than twenty plays and has translated several plays into Catalan. In 2008 she premiered Doris Lessing’s ‘Play with a Tiger’ at Teatre Lliure. Of her recent stage works, we highlight ‘Maria Rosa’, by Àngel Guimerà; ‘With My WholeHeartMindBody’, a stage reading of feminist manifestos of the 20th and 21st centuries; ‘Sol solet’, by Àngel Guimerà; ‘Una lluita constant’, co-production Temporada Alta 2018 and La Ruta 40, a company resident in the Sala Beckett, and ‘Grrrls !!!’, feminist manifestos of the 20th and 21st century, 2019.
OUR THEATRE OUR TIME
Our Time – Our Theatre. The Directors, participants of the lab, becoming members of a board for a hypothetical new theatre to be created, discussing about how the new theatre will be.
VISITING THE RUINS
Visiting the ruins of Empúries with the directors of DLM.
Empúries (Catalan: Empúries [əmˈpuɾiəs]) was an ancient city on the Mediterranean coast of Catalonia, Spain. Empúries is also known by its Spanish name, Ampurias (Spanish: Ampurias [amˈpuɾjas]). The city Ἐμπόριον (Greek: Ἐμπόριον, Emporion, meaning “trading place”, cf. emporion) was founded in 575 BC by Greek colonists from Phocaea. After the invasion of Gaul from Iberia by Hannibal the Carthaginian general in 218 BC, the city was occupied by the Romans (Latin: Emporiae). In the Early Middle Ages, the city’s exposed coastal position left it open to marauders and it was abandoned.Empúries is located within the Catalan comarca of Alt Empordà on Costa Brava. The ruins are midway between the town of L’Escala and the tiny village of Sant Martí d’Empúries.
CLOSURE
Closure of the lab with Anne Cattaneo Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab connected from New York and Sahar Assaf Artistic Director of Directors Lab Mediterranean from San Francisco.
Closing day of DLM’s 3rd edition 2021 at Teatre Lliure, Barcelona.
We couldn’t be happier, more blessed or fortunate to have made this edition possible, both physical and online. We had a great time, amazing sessions, wonderful guest artists and we do hope this edition fulfilled the aim of the DLM in general, that is all about connecting people and cultures.
