All you need is love (and you'll find it at Grec)

BarcelonaWhether you believe in love or not, the Grec stages await you to question it. This year's extensive festival program includes a series of shows designed to unravel romantic love and reveal its intricacies, but also to reflect on the mark that falling in love leaves on us, or simply to remember why we are so captivated by a couple who loves endlessly.

A romantic comedy that refuses to be a romantic comedy.

'You promised me a love story', by Helena Tornero

Beckett Hall. From June 26 to July 27

Playwright Helena Tornero, resident at the Sala Beckett this season, had long been mindful of her mother's request to stop doing political theater and write a romantic comedy. In the end, she listened. "I owed her a debt, but not only that. Staging love is also political, because we talk a lot about violence and little about love," Tornero argues. You promised me a love story, the author draws on the clichés of romantic comedies to construct a metatheatrical show that explores the challenges of writing a love story in the 21st century.

Tornero puts a playwright and her screenwriters on stage, facing a series of obstacles while trying to create a romantic comedy. Little by little, they themselves become the characters in their story and become immersed in all the stereotypes of the genre. "It's a romantic comedy that refuses to be a romantic comedy," says Israel Solà, who directed the script. The show has five actors on stage at all times—Ester Cort, Fermí Delfa, Sandra Pujol Torguet, Roger Torns, and Teresa Vallicrosa—through whom this romantic play, full of nods to the genre, is articulated. "We pushed the envelope. We laughed at romantic comedies, but we used all their mechanisms: a wonderful soundtrack, a great kiss at the end of the story..." says Solà.

Between supposed reality and fiction, the production traces two paths and ends up choosing one. To find out which of the two wins the battle, all you have to do is go to the Sala Beckett before July 27.

In search of the El Dorado of love

'Love Story', by the Señor Serrano Group

Gracia Free Theater. July 18-20

"What do we talk about when we talk about love?" the Señor Serrano Group asked itself at the genesis of the show premiering at the Grec Festival. "What makes us vulnerable in love?" asks director Àlex Serrano. History of love Two stories coexist: the personal experiences of a performer (Anna Pérez Moya), which engages the audience as it addresses contemporary situations, and the documentary narration of short historical stories through Serrano's signature stage setup. The company returns to the language that has made it internationally famous, combining live video, streaming, music, models, and puppets to deliver a high-voltage political discourse.

The love references are endless and the Señor Serrano Group has no limits of register, neither thematic nor formal, Virginia Woolf and Aeneas. The African Queen And a wasted Chris Hemsworth can suddenly burst forth, engulfed in flames. What does love promise us that makes us so indebted to it, after so many centuries of human history?

The philosopher Clara Serra is the playwright of the show History of love, directed by Àlex Serrano and Pau Palacios. The trio previously worked together on the opera Tenorio, by Tomás Marco, which they staged last year at the Teatro Real in Madrid and with which they turned the romantic myth of Don Juan on its head. Now they attempt to answer a flood of new questions about love. Where do love, desire, and sex meet? Why can love do so much harm? "Can we identify with a 17th-century story? What happens if we tell it today?" continues Cristina Cubells, the show's assistant director.–Does the search for love always involve that obsessive journey of searching beyond, of finding El Dorado, the source of fulfillment? What presence does love have in our contemporary world, when it seems that there is total freedom and where everything is possible? Do we need certain limits to make our way?

This will be the fifteenth show of the Serrano family, just ten years since they received the prestigious Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale, which consolidated a unique career and language internationally. After an opera, comes a small-format, one-man show, which will only run for three days in Barcelona, ​​​​at Lliure de Gràcia from July 18 to 20. Its uniqueness is what allows and at the same time compels them to tour around the world, explains Àlex Serrano: "Theatrical programming continues to be articulated by costumbrista, classical, text-based, and character-based theater. And we are forced to go to festivals, because it's impossible to hold a season in our city, and it's a shame."

A tribute to Carme Elias

'Love Letters' by AR Gurney

Villarroel. July 28

It's been three years since actress Carme Elias publicly announced that she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer'sSince then, theater director Sílvia Munt, along with Bitò producer Josep Domènech, has been searching for a show for Elias that would fit his new role and circumstances. "We wanted to find a text for Carme that she would enjoy. The solution lay in love and the classics." Love letters by AR Gurney, which he had done a few years ago, and they decided to go ahead with it in the form of a dramatized reading, with Ramon Madaula as Elias's scene partner.

This show premiered last fall at the Temporada Alta festival, and now it's coming to Barcelona thanks to the Grec Theatre. The show revolves around a couple who reunite through letters. "It's a theater classic, which has been performed by great acting couples," notes Munt, who adds that these Love letters They are, above all, "a tribute to Carme."