Joel Juan was crying. He was crying as he said hello. Tears brought on, we don't know, by Sonia's final monologue about boundless resilience and faith in the afterlife, or by the emotional release he felt after an hour and a half journey with the eight characters of Uncle Vanya by Chekhov.

After eight years of sharing laughs with the two of them Escape room and The great comedianJoel Joan (Barcelona, ​​1970) takes a 180-degree turn in his theatrical career and faces not only a dramatic role, not only a 19th-century Russian classic, but a major theatrical challenge: to play all the characters himself in Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov. From February 24 to March 22, the Argentinian Nelson Valente directs this updated and concentrated version of that rural drama, a work by Simon Stephens, at the Teatro Romea (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) which starred Andrew Scott at the National Theatre in London (the hot priest from the series Fleabag) and earned him critical acclaim and awards.

A unique theatrical phenomenon has given rise to a large part of our country's talent for actors and actresses: amateur theater. "In Catalonia, every town and village has its theater. It may be full of trash all year round, but when Christmas comes around, they clean it up and make a The Shepherds"Amateur theater has caught the interest of many people, and in fact, all of us who are dedicated to this profession come from there. It's part of our country's DNA; it's incredibly rich, and it hasn't been given enough institutional recognition," claims Jordi Milán, director of La Cubana. The company wanted to pay a proper tribute to amateur theater and, therefore, has decided to dedicate its first musical to it. Love came by taxi It has already begun performances at the Teatre Romea—although its official premiere is on Tuesday, September 30—and, for now, there are performances scheduled until mid-November.

For the third consecutive year, the theaters of the Focus Group have broken an all-time audience record. Last season, the Goya, Romea, Condal, and La Villarroel theaters garnered 517,000 spectators and €10.9 million in takings. "We have reached an unthinkable milestone. Surpassing half a million spectators and reaching this level of takings marks new records. These are springboard figures that point us toward an even more promising future," stated Daniel Martínez de Obregón, president of the Focus Group, during the season presentation. "The ingredients for success were there, and we have made good use of them to achieve a significant enough consensus regarding the high artistic quality of our production and exhibitions," he added.

For over forty years, he's been the first to arrive every evening at the Teatre Romea and the last to leave after the performance. He's the one who greets the audience at the door. "I'm the night watchman," he says, calmly. Juan Máñez (Hospitalet de Llobregat, 1963) joined the Romea in the 1980s because the theater's technical manager had seen him working at a stall his aunt had next to the theater, in the Mercat de la Boqueria. He dispatched and distributed sanitary products in hotels, restaurants, and furnished from the Raval neighborhood. Máñez was a bright teenager who had already classified the shoe store clerk who ended up becoming his wife.

Giant, by Mark Rosenblatt, has been the sensation of the season in English theater. It premiered last fall at the Royal Court Theatre and this spring was rescheduled at a commercial West End venue, the Harold Pinter Theatre, and has won three Olivier Awards. The play—something unusual—is playing in London and at the Teatro Romea in Barcelona, in the show's second production. All this is thanks to the keen eye of Josep Maria Pou, who saw it and came away enthusiastic. The actor plays the writer Roald Dahl at a critical moment: having become the great Anglo-Saxon author of young adult literature, when he is about to publish The witchesIn 1983, he was accused of anti-Semitism for an article containing statements such as: "Never before in the history of man has a race passed so rapidly from being a pitiable victim to a barbaric murderer." Giant arrives at the Grec Festival (until August 3) in the midst of the war in the Middle East.

There are two reasons why Josep Maria Pou (Mollet del Vallès, 1944) threw himself headlong into carrying Giant by Mark Rosenblatt on the Catalan stage. The most selfish reason, admits the actor and director of the Romea Theatre, was discovering that the protagonist was Roald Dahl (Llandaff, 1916 - Oxford, 1990). "Strange and complicated. The role seemed written for me," jokes Pou. The other reason—the main one—is the theme of the show. Giant, which premieres on July 5 at the Teatre Romea as part of the Grec festival, recreates a day in the life of Roald Dahl in August 1983, just after he published an incendiary review against the Israelis in the magazine Literary ReviewIn that text, Dahl referred to the 1982 conflict with Lebanon and said that during the invasion, "everyone started hating Israel."

"The theater is the place where humanity confronts itself," Jordi Bosch solemnly declares. We won't know for sure, but it's one of Arthur Miller's most famous quotes and one of the lines uttered by the protagonist of Death of a Comedian, Guillem Clua's show that premieres at the Romea Theater in Barcelona, ​​​​where it can be seen from March 21 to July 1. Clue changes Death of a Salesman, the most famous title by the American playwright, in a show that is "a love letter to the theater," he says, because it celebrates the power of theatrical fiction in our lives and also because the text is interwoven with phrases, scenes, authors and works that have marked his career and the history of universal theater. A dramaturgical game that gives the piece its due and turns it, in the process, into a Trivial Pursuit that will excite spectators, both the most experienced and the most laymen; those who don't want to miss any references will find them detailed in the edition published by Arola.

He appears with that Manelic chassis, that of Viscount Valmont, of Hamlet, of Spooner, of Professor Bernhardi, of Cyrano and an aura that could make him not go through the door, but when one of the great interpreters of active Catalan theatre sits down to talk, only, Luis Homar (Barcelona, ​​​​1957), a person who The biography of light by Pablo de Oros changed his life. This January he returned to live in Barcelona after more than five years in Madrid directing the National Classical Theatre Company, a stage that ended abruptlyFrom February 27 to March 16 he directs one of the last shows of the CNTC at the Teatre Romea, The great theatre of the world, by Calderon de la Barca.

Actress María Adánez (Madrid, 1976) arrives at the Romea Theatre in Barcelona full of enthusiasm. It is the first time she has set foot in a Catalan theatre with a professional project under her arm. "I don't understand why, until now, you had never acted in Barcelona," says the director of the Romea, Josep Maria Pou. Adánez owes much of her popularity to the series There is no one living here, where she played the character of Lucía between 2003 and 2006. She has since continued combining television, film and theatre, the discipline in which she made her debut when she was only seven years old with Dollhouse Ibsen and which has a considerable weight in his professional career. Precisely for this reason, Adánez takes Grammar by Ernesto Caballero with special enthusiasm. The show will be at the Romea until February 23.