The theater of my life

BarcelonaOften, a vocational love for the theater awakens far from the trappings of grand premieres. Sometimes it springs from parents who are deeply involved in the arts. in amateur theatreOthers are found in school performances that leave even the most skeptical student speechless, or thanks to enthusiastic grandparents who, on Christmas afternoon, abandoned the dishes to wash and decided to take all their grandchildren to see the Pastorets (Christmas plays). These are small stories behind which lies a great Catalan playwright, director, or actor who saw the seed of theater sprout in the theater of their town or city. These spaces garner extraordinary public esteem, but paradoxically, they are the ones that receive the least investment, the least programming, and the least institutional support.

On Saturday, March 21st, the Diada del Teatre (Theater Day) will be celebrated for the third consecutive year with the goal of filling all the seats in participating theaters. And this year, one of the objectives of the Cap Butaca Buida (No Full Seat) campaign has been to promote the decentralization of the initiative. They've done so by bringing together 248 theaters across Catalonia, the Valencian Community, and the Balearic Islands, as well as Andorra and Buenos Aires. In total—pending final figures—the goal is to fill more than 90,000 seats with 288 shows and 324 performances, on a day designed to celebrate the cultural, social, and community value of the performing arts. In keeping with the spirit of the festival, we asked playwrights, directors, and performers from all over which theater they remember most fondly, to highlight that, often, the most cherished experiences happen outside of Barcelona.

Jordi Casanovas

Cal Bolet Theater in Vilafranca del Penedès

It was thanks to the free tickets he received at an acting course that playwright and director Jordi Casanovas (Vilafranca del Penedès, 1978) began to frequent the Teatre Cal Bolet. "There I did my first performances with the groups that emerged from that workshop. We performed After the rain, by Sergi Belbel, and The Exterminating Angel"From Luis Buñuel. Since we couldn't find the script, I remember transcribing the entire film at home, and starting and stopping the VHS tape," explains Casanovas, author of shows such as A Catalan story (2013), The Dance of Revenge (2019) and Pack (2024). He was 18 at the time and was already beginning to realize that his professional life would take place on the stage, or at least that he would try to make it so.

At Cal Bolet, Casanovas also sowed the first seed of the company that later became Flyhard and ended up opening one of the smallest (and most successful) theaters in Barcelona. Before that, however, they were already active at Cal Bolet with productions such as Neoburning Generation, where everything happened in the stalls and the audience was positioned on all four sides. "Cal Bolet is a small, classic, Italian-style theater. We were young and always wanted to change everything. We had to negotiate with the city council and be very persistent," the playwright recounts. Many years later, he has returned with professional shows such as Conspiracy theory (2024) and Dinner with battle (2021).

According to Casanovas, what is needed to improve the circulation of shows in Catalonia? "There are many theaters that could have programs running for more days, not just one or two a week. There are municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants that could have short seasons. The danger is that they become monopolies and only certain shows are performed, but the advantage is that exposure would be gained," argues Casanovas. "Tickets sell out automatically."

Esther López

Main Theatre of Palma de Mallorca

Theater, opera, zarzuela, and Palma's Teatro Principal are inseparable from the childhood of actress Esther López (Palma, 1986). "First, my brother, who is ten years younger than me, would go. I would stay for rehearsals when they couldn't pick me up. And at seven years old, I began to sing in my heart," says López, who is part of the La Calòrica company and has starred in shows such as The deer rut (2025) and series like It never snows in the city (2017). The actress vividly remembers the first time she went on stage to sing: she was in a production of Carmina Burana and he experienced it "as a very powerful experience that he had never heard of before."

Later, she went to Barcelona to study, and her connection with the Teatro Principal became more widespread, until her professional career led her back home. "I didn't act again until 2012, when we had been..." A terrible illness and a very sad death for Queen Elizabeth I with La Calórica. I stepped back into the main hall in 2021 with What do we talk about when we don't talk about all this shit?“López explains. Now she realizes the theater's size and importance, and values ​​it even more. “It's a small Liceu with over 800 seats. When I think that I performed my end-of-year plays there and walked on that stage as if it were the most important in the world, I see how lucky I was and that that experience prepared me for many things,” the actress affirms. From her point of view, the biggest shortcoming of the Balearic Islands' performing arts scene is the programming. “We have a very limited program. There are theaters that are closed, no money is being invested, the seasons are very short, and the budgets are a joke. The people who dedicate themselves to theater in the Balearic Islands are heroes,” she emphasizes.

Marta Pérez

Juneda Development Theatre

Marta Pérez's (Barcelona, ​​1966) history with Juneda dates back to her childhood summers. The actress and member of the T de Teatre company was born and raised in Barcelona, ​​but as a child, from June until September, she would stay in this village in Les Garrigues, her mother's family's hometown. Part of her family lives there, as well as a close group of friends she's kept since adolescence. "I spent the most wonderful summers in the world there," the actress recalls. For a long time, her acting vocation and her love for the village followed separate paths: the first theater she performed in was the Romea in Barcelona, ​​and it wasn't until several decades later that she acted professionally in Juneda.

"The first time I performed at the Teatre Foment was in 2024 with The queen's necklace“I was thrilled. I needed an extra dose of concentration and I couldn't look at the audience because it was full of the faces of family and friends. I was playing on home turf,” the actress points out. A few years earlier, she had begun her connection with the Teatre Foment by participating in a series of workshops for people with disabilities and senior citizens. “It was an initiative of the cultural manager and producer Ramon Giné, who is doing excellent work at Foment. The theater has built a loyal audience and has a fantastic, consistent program. Having this is fundamental for the town. It creates an audience and a community,” Pérez emphasizes. Along these lines, the actress underlines the importance of touring to achieve longer runs for shows and to bring culture to all of Catalonia. “Not all towns have someone dedicated to programming the theaters. What's needed is to create a circuit that promotes the movement of productions outside of Barcelona,” she says.

Sergi Belbel

Regina Theatre of Terrassa

All of Sergi Belbel's (Terrassa, 1963) memories of shows during his childhood and youth have the same setting: the Regina Theatre in Terrassa, which is currently disused but for many years hosted a series of family programming called Laughter! The Regina Theatre is located at the top of the Catholic Social Centre, which also houses another, smaller venue, El Socialet. "That was the first stage I ever stepped on as an actor. I must have been 14 or 15 years old. We were a group of young people who did theatre, and the actress Francesca Piñón was also part of it. We were quite mischievous; we even performed..." The phoenix "by Benet i Jornet in a Catholic space," recalls Belbel, who has since cultivated a wide career with shows such as Petting (1991), Strangers (2005) and Lali Symon (2023).

The director and playwright completed the circle that links him to his hometown in 2011, when he was asked to inaugurate the remodeled Teatro Principal in Terrassa. He did so with An old, familiar smell in a co-production with the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya“I had done Benet and Jornet as an amateur in Terrassa and returned as a professional. It was wonderful,” says Belbel, who praises amateur theater: “It’s what’s truly decentralized, and it has been a bastion and a source of resistance, especially during the dictatorship.” For the director, theaters outside Barcelona have a major challenge ahead of them: becoming spaces for creation. “Some, like the one in Sant Cugat, have been. Why isn’t this happening in the others? A dedicated budget for creation is necessary to ensure that Victoria Szpunberg’s new play premieres in Vic, or that La Calórica’s next production is staged in Reus,” Belbel argues.

Moha Amazian

Vic Theatre and Film Space (ETC)

The first play Moha Amazian (Vic, 1995) ever saw performed in a theater was in English, at a matinee he attended with his school at the ETC Space in Vic. "I remember there were four actors playing a lot of different roles. When they came out to take their bows, I was amazed; I thought there would be many more people on stage," explains the actor, known for shows such as Robadors Street (2021), Bonobo (2022) and Brave womenwhich he is currently performing at the Teatre Lliure. For Amazian, the ETC Space has been a very close-knit venue that has seen him grow as a performer, from end-of-year school plays to one of his first professional projects. Moha"I've done everything there, but Moha "That was the thing that impacted me the most. It was a show about the prejudices faced by migrants, and it made me fall in love with theater from its most social perspective," the performer emphasizes.

At the same time, Amazian has also been a spectator at the ETC, where he has seen productions such as RagazzoStarring Oriol Pla. But the Vic theater stopped programming just as Amazian was able to return professionally with one of the numerous projects he has premiered in Barcelona. The actor laments this and insists on the importance of keeping these theaters alive. "Much more funding is needed so that the community feels a sense of ownership, but this shouldn't conflict with programming. City councils try to recoup as much of their investment as possible. Often, nothing can be programmed because they are used for other purposes. Other spaces need to be made available so that theaters can actually be theater," the actor pleads.

Marta Marco

Catholic Circle of Badalona

Even before she was born, Marta Marco (Badalona, ​​1976) had a connection to the theater through her parents, Lluís Marco (also a professional actor) and Neus Viñas. "They met at the Teatre Viu, in the San José Parish Center in Badalona, ​​which is no longer operating, and afterwards they did a lot of theater at the Círcol Catòlic," the actress recalls. As a child, she visited this theater many times because the school took them, and she had also been on stage there in classical ballet performances. "It was the theater that I had experienced inside and out," says Marco, who has performed in productions such as A Boston marriage (2005), Leenane's beauty queen (2019) and The braid(2022), among many others.

When her father entered the professional sphere, Marta Marco also began to discover this scene. "I remember going to the Romea and the Lliure a lot. I was very impressed by the Quartet "That Anna Lizaran did," the actress points out. Some time later, the Círcol still exists in Badalona, ​​but Marco's closest connection now is with a small theater in Sant Miquel de Balenyà, because its driving force is her partner, the actor Ernest Villegas. "We must be able to support all these theaters, even the smallest ones, because they exist. It's essential that companies and producers can take their shows outside of Barcelona," the actress insists. "Institutions, please help and, above all, take care of culture."