There is a teenage memory in the life of Irene Rubio (Sallent, 1991) that remained etched in her mind. When she was 16 years old, one day her mother decided to teach her how to make macaroni. "She put me there, with the boiling pot in front of me, and told me: 'Now you have to put salt in the water.' When I asked her why, she replied: 'Because that's how it's been done all my life,'" explains the writer. Over time, she realized that this answer was repeated on other occasions, and this made her uneasy. From that strangeness, Rubio has made a novel: Seràs la vall (L'Altra Editorial), with which she has won the Documenta 2025 prize, it is a dystopia about a female community that has always lived constrained by ancestral customs.

Until she turned thirty, Mar Márquez (Barcelona, 1981) only spoke Spanish. Despite being born and living in Catalonia, her entire environment communicated in that language, so for her Catalan was a foreign and distant language. But Márquez started working in a place where the working language was Catalan, and she began a relationship with a partner who also spoke it, so she made a decision: "I chose Catalan, I made it my chosen and beloved language. It was hard for me, but I stand by it. Since then, I write and think in Catalan," she states. The choice is even more significant because it was linked to her first steps as a future writer. Starting from classes at the Ateneu Barcelonès, Márquez began to craft the seed of her first novel, Amat Amat, which she has just published with Males Herbes. "I am a great defender of the language. Let's create culture in Catalan, please," Márquez demands.

What do science and language have in common today? Playwright and director Jordi Oriol has no doubt: the uncertainty principle. "Scientists have reached a point where they need to know more, but they can't. Science has begun to speak in metaphors, mathematics is about statistics and probabilities. We have gone from Shakespearean to be or not to be to to be and not to be at the same time," says Oriol. Faced with this reality, the creator has built a show that unites the two worlds to make their connections evident. Titled The Last Atom (which can also be read as "L'ultimàtum", in one of the creator's fun linguistic winks), the production stars Joan Carreras and Mia Esteve and will be performed from May 29 to June 21 at the Teatre Goya.

When Toni Acosta's (La Laguna, 1972) children started spending nights away from home, the actress felt a deep sense of emptiness she didn't know where it came from. "I have a very social job, I'm surrounded by people, I have many friends, and I spend my days attending many events. If my life is full of things, why do I feel this emptiness?" the performer often asked herself. Convinced that it was a shared feeling with other women, Acosta proposed to playwright and director Juan Carlos Rubio that he write a monologue for her. A Movie-Like Mother arrives this Thursday at the Teatre Romea, where it will be performed until June 14. The show has previously been in Madrid and toured the country with a good reception. "Many mothers identify with it and feel that we share an experience as a community," notes the actress.

Two years ago, playwright and director Judith Pujol summoned creators Amaya Galeote, Shadai Larios, and María Velasco to the Convent de les Arts in Alcover. In terms of disciplines, they have little in common: Galeote is a choreographer, Larios specializes in object theatre, and Velasco has worked essentially in text-based theatre. Pujol presented them with the challenge of jointly creating a performance based on the idea of fugues in the present. The result, titled Inventari de fugues, will be performed from May 28 to June 21 in the Sala Tallers of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (TNC) with Laia Marull in the leading role.

Sixto Paz gathered, in 2025, more than 50,000 spectators with the play La presència, a thriller with supernatural touches that filled the Teatre Borràs for two seasons. Now the company led by Pau Roca returns to the same venue with La promesa, a production of radically different tone and genre, although it shares part of the authorship of that success. Yago Alonso wrote La presència with Carmen Marfà (with whom he had also created the hilarious Ovelles), and on this occasion the playwright has teamed up with Sílvia Navarro to create La promesa, a delirious comedy about a group of friends who reunite at a party. The show will be performed in Barcelona from May 23 to July 12, and from January it will tour Catalonia.

Júlia Truyol (Palma, 1987) is one of the driving forces behind La Calòrica, but over the years she has forged a career that goes beyond the company and demonstrates the actress's voracity for taking on different challenges. She now faces her first dramatic leading role with Contra Antígona, directed by Andrea Jiménez and performed from May 21 to June 21 at the Sala Fabià Puigserver of the Teatre Lliure. The show brings Sophocles' myth to contemporaneity with a peculiarity: at each performance, 14 volunteer spectators will go on stage with headphones to become part of the play.

The 70th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest has been one of the most controversial in history. The gala was held this Saturday at the Wienere Stadthalle in Vienna without the participation of Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Iceland in protest against Israel's participation in the contest. The edition has passed without incidents or protests, despite the fact that before it began, hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered at the doors of the pavilion where the final was taking place under the slogan No stage for genocide to show their rejection of the contest. Finally, Bulgaria was proclaimed the winner of Eurovision with the song Bangaranga, performed by Dara, and Israel came in second place with the song Michelle, performed by Noam Bettan.

The playwright Lluïsa Cunillé (Badalona, 1961) wrote the play Dinamarca in 2014 and published it in 2017. The text is, according to director Albert Arribas, "a contemporary classic that has impacted many people" but which, until now, had never premiered in Catalonia. Sala Beckett and the production company Bitò have joined forces to bring it to the stage, in a production starring Pere Arquillué and Imma Colomer under Arribas's direction. The play will be performed from May 15 to June 14 at the Beckett and, from the autumn, will tour Catalonia. "Dinamarca is Lluïsa Cunillé's Hamlet. It revisits the ghosts of two characters marked by resentment and the need for revenge. The world had made them promises that have been broken, and they consider whether to be or not to be, whether to commit suicide or not," explains the director.

When defining the stage director Rakel Camacho, Josep Maria Pou (director of the Romea Theatre) says she is "one of the most promising of recent years", especially for her ability "to perform somersaults on ancient texts and try to make spectators discover new things, suitable for today's extreme life rhythms". Nominated for the Max awards with Fuenteovejuna (2025), Camacho has been characterized by adapting authors such as Francisco Nieva, Federico García Lorca, and Roberto Bolaño for the theatre. Last year, the director dared to tackle The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, in a production that arrives this Tuesday at the Romea Theatre and will be performed there until May 24.

After 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.

The friendship between two women who grew up together. The need to reinvent oneself in a world dominated by technology. Being young, finding yourself in a black hole and not knowing how to get out. Growing old and facing oblivion. These are not arguments for novels, nor for films, nor for plays, but for circus performances. The Fira Trapezi de Reus, which will take place from May 13 to 17, celebrates its 30th anniversary with a program focused on the diversity of the discipline and with the mission of showing that the circus goes far beyond technique: it is also dramaturgy and can also tell stories that leave the audience satisfied and moved. It will do so with productions such as Refugi, by Manolo Alcántara; Ínsula, by Alexandre Duran; Salar la pena, by Juan Carlos Panduro; 20 years later, still here!, by Lotta & Stina, and Conhort, by Hotel Iocandi, among many others. In total, the fair will host 60 Catalan and international companies with the mission of being a showcase for the circus being made abroad, but above all for what is being made in our country.

It has been a long time since they loved each other and now they have decided to take the step. T de Teatre and La Calòrica, two of the most relevant Catalan companies of the present, will join forces for a joint show that will premiere at the Teatre Poliorama on February 3, 2027. "From the beginning we have been admirers of La Calòrica. A year ago we proposed to get married and they said yes immediately," explains Àgata Roca, from T de Teatre. The union already has a creation underway titled Les dones Piñeiro, written by the "calòric" playwright playwright Joan Yago and directed by the also "calòric" playwright Israel Solà. "We have been fans of T de Teatre since we were very young, for us they have been a reference all our lives. It is a real luxury to be here," states Júlia Truyol, from La Calòrica, during a ceremony they organized at the Nau Bostik to formalize the union, with a popular sardine feast included.

Two years ago, director Ferran Utzet and actress Emma Vilarasau were looking for allies and producers to stage an ambitious project: to bring to the stage La truita by the Frenchman Baptiste Amann, a family tragicomedy that required eight performers on stage. Finally, they found the company Bitò, the Teatre Poliorama, and the Grec Festival as accomplices, and the production is about to become a reality. La truita will be performed from June 27 to August 8 at Poliorama within the Grec and will then inaugurate this same theater, where it will have a run from September 8 to October 18, with plans to tour Catalonia in 2027. "It is a great spectacle that requires a team of phenomenal actors. We wanted to do it on a grand scale, it is demanding in terms of casting and also the scenic device," states Utzet. For the production, he has used a translation by Carles Batlle, who is the one who discovered the play to him.

The Norwegian writer and playwright Jon Fosse (Haugesund, 1959), winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, is the most performed living European playwright in the world. "He occupies an important place in the theatrical canon, he is not at all a minority figure," emphasizes director Ferran Utzet. Despite Fosse's impact on contemporary theatre, his works are rarely present on the Catalan stage. In recent years, there have been very few productions, including "Soc el vent" directed by Marc Chornet at L'Akadèmia in 2021 and "Vindrà algú" in 2002, directed by Antonio Simón at Sala Beckett. Now Utzet wants to do him justice with "El fill", which will be performed from May 8 to June 7 at L'Espai Lliure de Montjuïc. "I have a strong sense of challenge and responsibility," says the director.

One of the most admirable achievements of Catalan playwrights in exile is their persistence in continuing to write theatre, despite knowing almost for certain that they would never see it performed in Catalonia. Ambrosi Carrion (Sant Gervasi de Cassoles, 1888–Cornellà de Conflent, 1973) was one of its foremost exponents. With about fifteen unpublished stage texts, Carrion also cultivated poetry and essay writing and built a literary career of over 30 works. Despite this, only one of his plays written in exile has been performed in Catalonia –La dama de Reus (Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 2008)– and his name has remained in the shadows for decades. With the intention of making him present and vindicating him, Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona has published Teatre inèdit de l'exili, a volume containing three unpublished works by Carrion, prepared by professors Josep Camps Arbós and Francesc Foguet Boreu.

What are we doing today to leave a better world for the women who will live in 2061, when Halley's Comet reappears?", asks theater director Gara Roda to introduce El firmament, a play by Lucy Kirkwood that will be performed from May 6 to June 14 in the Sala Petita of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. The production is set in 1759 —when the comet appeared— and begins with the murder conviction of a woman. To be exempted from the penalty, the woman claims she is pregnant, and the town convenes an all-female jury, made up of townspeople, who must decide if she is telling the truth or not. "I saw the play in New York and it captivated me. Often, only one story is told. Here, we have the opportunity to hear the voices of the fourteen women who will be on stage," says Gara Roda.

The choreographer Enric Gasa Valga (Esparreguera, 1976) left the town in the full bloom of his youth. "Those of my generation left without wanting to leave. To be a real professional, to have a strong career, you had many more opportunities abroad. We all thought it was a temporary situation and that we would return afterwards, but unfortunately, Northern Europe continues to offer better working conditions than the South," reflects the artist. Just a few days ago, he arrived in Barcelona with the production The Great Gatsby - The Show, a musical and choreographic adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic that will be performed at the Teatre Victòria from May 20 to 31. The large-scale show premiered in Austria and has been seen in Munich and Monte Carlo. After Barcelona, it will travel to Bangkok.

After taking over the Teatre del Raval in Barcelona in the autumn of 2024, Pep Tosar and Evelyn Arévalo were confident they could renovate and reopen the venue in six months. Finally, they have needed a year and a half to carry out the renovation they longed for, "tripling the budget to achieve a comprehensive refurbishment" of the space, they explain. The theatre, located at Sant Antoni Abad street number 12, is practically debuting everything. "The grid [the frame of beams from which the spotlights hang] is completely new, and the stage too. We tore down the old one and built a new one. It has gained a meter of proscenium, it has seven in total. We have also redone the old amphitheatre with three new tiers, and we have renovated all the technical lighting and sound equipment," points out Tosar. The renovation has involved changing the floor to adjust its inclination to the new stage height and creating a technical booth that did not exist until then. "We have tried to move away from very high old stages to maximize the relationship between performers and spectators," emphasizes Tosar.

For a long time, Gil Pratsobrerroca (Vic, 1996) dreamed that he wanted to be a writer without knowing if he would succeed. "I've always loved writing a lot, since I was little. In school I entered the Sant Jordi contests and then it became a hobby. When I have a free afternoon, I often start writing. It's a process that relaxes me: I don't have to fight with anyone and I make all the decisions," explains the writer, who with El joc del silenci (La Campana) has become one of the big winners of this Sant Jordi. The thriller, with which he debuted in September, has been the second best-selling Catalan fiction book of the Diada behind Regina Rodríguez Sirvent, who has triumphed with Crispetes de matinada, from the same publisher, and who three years ago had a similar journey with her first book, Les calces al sol.