From an assembly to a pandemic: the untold stories of the Grec

Barcelona50 years ago, a group of artists joined forces with one goal: to recover the Greek Theatre and place it at the service of the people. From that collective impulse, the Grec was born, a festival that in the last five decades has become a showcase for the best international shows and, at the same time, a springboard for local creation. We take advantage of the anniversary to rescue the festival's back story from the hands of artists and directors who have been part of it all this time.

Mario Gas

Stage director and actor

El Grec was born in 1976 as an initiative directly driven by the theater profession. It was the early years of post-Francoism and artists organized to reclaim a stage, that of the Teatre Grec, which was highly valued by the city. "El Grec emerges through a long union struggle that began in 1971 and sought to dismantle the structures of the Franco regime from within," recalls director and actor Mario Gas, who was heavily involved in the festival's beginnings and later premiered several shows there. Gas explains that the artistic world was debating between two strategies: producing a white paper demanding various public spaces or organizing a single direct action with the entire profession. "It was put to an assembly, the second option won, and a specific action was designed at the Teatre Grec, which had been closed for a year," says Gas.

Inaugurated in 1929 for the International Exposition of Barcelona, the stage had been intermittently active. In the 1960s, for example, it hosted classical and contemporary theater, dance, and music. But with the recovery of theater, a self-managed festival also began that involved the entire profession. "That season was titled For a theater at the service of the people. The atmosphere of seriousness, and at the same time of celebration and joy, was fantastic, and attendance was tremendous," Gas emphasizes. After that first edition, the assembly split, and in 1979 El Grec passed into the hands of the new democratic administration. "The first period, with Joan-Anton Benach and Biel Moll, was spectacular," concludes Gas, who advocates for more theater to be performed on that stage. "It is increasingly affected by sound pollution, and many shows cannot be performed, but it should be recovered," says the director.

Anna Rosa Cisquella

Co-founder of Dagoll Dagom

Dagoll Dagom is one of the Catalan companies that has premiered the most shows at Grec. The first one they performed there was Antaviana in 1979 and the play marked a before and after for the company. "It meant our professionalization. For us, performing at Grec was a huge opportunity," recalls Anna Rosa Cisquella, who adds that the performances were a great success. At a time when there were not many theaters in the city yet —the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya did not exist, nor did the Teatre Lliure de Montjuïc, among many others—, the recovery of the Teatre Grec was a great joy for the profession. "It was a stage with two thousand seats that opened to the city. Being part of the festival was a sign of quality shows, which were heavily promoted because there was no other offer in the summer," points out Cisquella.

Later, the company returned with Glups! (1983), El Mikado (1986), La Perritxola (2003, inaugural show of the festival) and La gran nit de Dagoll Dagom (2024). "In the beginning, the programming was quite popular. Everyone looked forward to Grec, for the theater and also for the bonus of spending time in the gardens. It was quite an event," highlights Cisquella, who has a lot of anecdotes from those nights. "In Antaviana we had mirrors on stage. We had to stop the performance to clean them, because with the humidity they had become cloudy," she explains. She also has a special memory of a performance of El Mikado where they had 24 musicians in the orchestra pit, which was open. "They were wonderful nights, full of color and joy," emphasizes Cisquella.

Santi Fondevila

Theatre critic

In the mid-80s, and especially under the direction of Elena Posa, Grec became a great showcase for the international contemporary scene in Barcelona. At that time, it was one of the few venues in Catalonia where you could see leading shows from Europe, and the public responded enthusiastically. Santi Fondevila, theatre critic for ARA, especially remembers A Night with Vittorio Gassman, which the legendary Italian actor presented at the Teatre Grec in 1984. "It was amazing, to see him and hear him speak in the middle of the stage," says Fondevila. Among the most prestigious creators the festival brought to our country for the first time, the critic also highlights the performance of choreographer Merce Cunningham and musician John Cage in 2000. "They brought the most revolutionary dance from the United States in a show that was beautiful," emphasizes Fondevila, who also has in memory "a sensational version of The Master and Margarita by the company Complicité" that was seen there in 2012.

"Increasingly it has been a festival of accumulation, rather than selection. It has been incorporating everything that happens in Barcelona in July," explains Fondevila. What has not changed is the importance of the opening show —"It's a difficult challenge, and over time we've seen that starting the festival with a theatre proposal is not usually successful. The most ingenious directors have leaned towards circus, dance, and music," says the critic— and the precarious gastronomic offer. According to Fondevila, "it has never been possible to eat decently, even if it's just sandwiches at a reasonable price." Fortunately, the magic of the experience has been maintained: "Experiencing summer nights in these gardens has a very valuable appeal for everyone. This is why the audience has always been very diverse, not strictly theatrical. The only thing that has changed is that now people take photos with their mobile phones and post them on social media."

Àngels Margarit

Choreographer

The beginnings of the company Mudances, led by Àngels Margarit, are partly linked to the Grec festival. The company had premiered its first show in 1985 and, a year later, brought it to the old Casa de Caritat within the Grec. "They were years when Europe looked towards Catalonia and Spain, we were coming out of the dictatorship. We had performed abroad and it was great that they programmed us in Barcelona. At that time, we sometimes did two weeks of performances," explains Margarit. Before that, she had been a spectator at the festival and particularly remembers the Bread and Puppet company, which marked her. Throughout its career, Mudances performed up to seven creations at the Grec, including Atzavara (1991), Tèrbola (1998), and Capricis (2013).

The weight of dance in the festival's programming has varied. "For many years, the Grec hosted the street festival Dies de Dansa, which was very important for local artists and for bringing in international emerging artists, but it operated with little budget and too much precariousness. They were years of little respect for dance," explains Margarit. The choreographer particularly highlights the work of Xavier Albertí, Ramon Simó, and, more recently, Francesc Casadesús, for placing dance at the forefront of the Grec. "In recent years, it has gained a lot of ground thanks to the impulse given by people who love it. We have managed to program it and show how innovative, daring, and spectacular it is. Dance is now very present in all programming, but a few years ago all this did not exist. In Barcelona, we are in a good moment," notes Margarit.

Xavier Albertí

Stage director and director of the Grec (1995-1999)

Xavier Albertí arrived at the direction of Grec in 1995, at a time when the festival had opened for the first time to private theaters. "It was a turning point in terms of programming, because we went from about thirty shows to a hundred," explains the director. His great challenge at the helm of Grec consisted of ordering this hybrid format. He opted to organize two programming sessions, the official and the open one, mirroring the models of the Avignon and Edinburgh festivals. He also created Grec Metropolità, adding the participation of different municipalities near Barcelona to the festival.

"I was told that my festivals had too much of an offering, but that was a consequence of the institutions, which believed that opening Grec to private enterprise was a way to make it grow," points out Albertí. During his tenure as director, he bet on bringing major international figures to Barcelona, such as the German choreographer Sasha Waltz, the Swiss director Christoph Marthaler, the Belgians Needcompany —"we rented La Villarroel and had 40 people in the audience, a failure," says Albertí— and the Italian company Societas Raffaello Sanzio, with Romeo Castellucci at the helm. "They performed the Oresteia and halfway through the performance all the critics left the stalls. The following year, the Avignon festival programmed it and La Vanguardia published a double page praising the show. It is the first and only time I have called a critic to reproach them for anything. That episode was a symptom of the fact that Barcelona still needed the tutelage of the older European brothers for someone to tell us that this was the path of the avant-garde," reflects Albertí. He also highlights the bets on local creators such as Carlota Subirós and Roger Bernat at a time when the festival's resources were more limited, compared to the present.

Calixto Bieito

Stage director

Since the late 1980s, Calixto Bieito established a deep connection with the Grec. In 1989 he premiered Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in 1990 he brought Goldoni's The Lovers, in 1991 he performed Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and in 1993 he did Rodoreda's Un dia. "I remember the collaboration with Elena Posa and Miquel Lumbierres to stage King John in a church in 1995 and how we adapted the space almost entirely ourselves, with great passion and joy. It was a feverish but fun rehearsal process," explains Bieito. With "Un dia"The first memory of the festival that comes to mind is the premiere of The True Story of Richard III.

Marcos Morau

Choreographer and director of La Veronal

"The first memory of the festival that comes to mind is the premiere of Voronia in 2015 at the Grec amphitheater. We were very young and opening the Grec was a mix of dream, responsibility, and a lot of fear. That vertigo before going on stage is a memory I still hold very vividly," explains Marcos Morau. Since that performance, La Veronal has woven a solid and deep bond with the Barcelona festival, where it has brought shows like Firmamento (2023) and Sonoma (2024). "It has always been a challenge and an opportunity for growth. It has helped us to expose ourselves, to reach new audiences, and to present our work to programmers from all over the world. It has also been a way to reconnect with Barcelona and with an audience that often does not frequent theaters during the season," says the choreographer.

Morau also has memories as a spectator: "They are summer nights in Barcelona, discovering artists and sharing the feeling that art is part of the city's life in a very special way." If he had to choose one experience linked to the Grec, he picks the performance of Sonoma with Maria Arnal. "It was one of the most beautiful moments of my career. Even the rain, which could have been a problem, ended up being part of an absolutely magical and unforgettable night," highlights the artist.

Gabriela Carrizo

Choreographer and co-founder of Peeping Tom

One of the most distressing moments in the history of the Grec was during the coronavirus pandemic. With health restrictions, the 2020 edition was on the verge of collapse and could not proceed normally. Until mid-July, all in-person cultural events were suspended and the population's mobility was limited to try to contain the virus. But on Sunday, July 19, 2020, when Peeping Tom was to premiere, 200 people demonstrated in front of the Grec Theatre in Barcelona with the slogan #culturaéssegura, which went viral on social media. The City Council, unusually, took responsibility for moving forward with the festival, despite the restrictions that the Generalitat had imposed on Friday, which prohibited cultural performances. Finally, on Monday, the Generalitat gave the green light to the Grec Festival, Cruïlla XXS, and Pedralbes.

"We had been preparing the Díptic

with a new group, we had performers stuck in Australia, we rehearsed by video, and finally we arrived here. The Avignon Festival had stopped, the Grec was one of the few European festivals that continued, with separation between spectators. It was very exciting because at one point it was considered: does the festival continue or not? We were waiting before the performance. And the slogan «La cultura és segura» (Culture is safe) emerged from a demonstration," recalls Gabriela Carrizo. That performance was particularly moving, to the point that a few minutes after the show began, the audience applauded simply because it was being performed. "All the Grec technicians and ours came out to greet us — Carrizo recalls—. For us, the Grec has been important, but I feel that there is a whole ecosystem that opened its arms to us and supports us, and that is precious. We liked coming to work in Barcelona, the Grec in the summer, with this climate, was like a dream: we fell so in love with the city that we stayed to live here," explains the artist.