Christiane Jatahy and La Veronal: the productions that Temporada Alta will premiere in 2026
Among the artists who will pass through the festival are also Pablo Messiez, Agnès Mateus and Quim Tarrida and Xavier Bobés
BarcelonaAfter performing at the Venice Biennale and inaugurating the current season of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya with La mort i la primavera, the company La Veronal will present its new show at the next edition of Temporada Alta. The play will be titled Living & Leaving and will be the first chapter of a trilogy exploring life as a territory in transformation. Fabio Calvisi and Marina Rodríguez will be the performers, tasked with staging the tension between living and leaving, appearing and disappearing, in a medium-format piece designed to be performed in theaters, museums, galleries, or outdoor spaces.
Another international artist who will premiere in Girona is the Brazilian Christiane Jatahy, a festival regular who this summer we will also see at Grec. At Temporada Alta she will bring Julia. 15 years later (2011-2026), a new version of the show she presented in 2013 at the Girona festival, which revisits August Strindberg's classic Miss Julie. Jatahy will work with two Catalan performers —Júlia Genís and Moha Amazian—, with the challenge of updating the proposal and transferring it to present-day Catalonia. The show, which will mix theater and cinema, will be co-produced with the Teatre Lliure and aligns with the institutions' aim of uniting Catalan and foreign artists, as they have done on previous occasions with works such as Ai! La misèria ens farà feliços (2025) and Uncle Vanya (2021).
The Argentine Pablo Messiez will also be at Temporada Alta, drawing from the aesthetic world of Francis Bacon and Agustín Gómez Arcos's novel El cordero carnívoro, to reflect on art, ephemeral experiences, and the act of enduring in memory. And the Navarrese-Mexicans Oligor and Microscopía, creators of small gems like La melancolía del turista, will bring their imaginary museum titled Museo de los Relámpagos to Girona. The festival director, Narcís Puig, explained that the festival will have a total of 16 co-productions, 11 of which will be premieres, and that, due to scheduling reasons, some are yet to be announced.
A 'Massacre' about religion
The duo formed by Agnès Mateus and Quim Tarrida will return to the festival with Massacre, which arrives four years after Patatas fritas falsas and almost ten years after the successful Rebota, rebota y en tu cara explota (2017). In the new show they will reflect on the role of faith, religion and beliefs in contemporary times. "We are heirs to a Christian culture, but when you start looking closely, that a tortured man with thorns on his head talks to us about love seems like a contradiction," says Mateus. The show will reflect on myth and lies in relation to "the banal concerns of well-meaning Europeans".
Among the Catalan artists coproduced by the festival is also Xavier Bobés i Solà with a new scenic poem about grief and loss titled Epitap; Ferran Joanmiquel Pla has written and will direct about the meeting of three sisters after the mother's death in La solitud dels cossos celestes; the circus company "eia" will perform Secrets, in which they question the passage of time; and Maria Jover and Gerard Franch, one of the emerging companies on the current scene, will premiere Un mal normal, a creation about power mechanisms and dominant relationships. The festival will also program shows such as Mil tres, say cheese, by Cabosanroque, and Grans bardisses, by Llàtzer Garcia (Quim Masó prize 2025), which will be seen earlier at the Lliure as part of the Grec, and will host a work in progress by Mal Pelo called La mà i els temps.
There will be two readings dedicated to great ladies of Catalan literature, in collaboration with the Festival Clàssics. Àngels Gonyalons will give voice to Drames rurals, by Caterina Albert, with Sergi Belbel directing, and Anna Alarcón will read texts by Montserrat Roig conducted by Carlota Subirós. In addition, the festival will repeat with the Llibràlegs cycle, with Meritxell Yanes and David Marcé, and the traditional and popular dramaturgy tournament, which this year will feature texts by Àfrica Alonso, Roser Vilajosana and Pau Vinyals, among other creators.