I remember going shopping for clothes with my mother who had that habit of everything having to match, everything having to go together. There was that obsession with making sure any piece you bought matched the clothes you already had.This is no longer the case with your daughters. Do you have many arguments about clothes?

Every two years, the National Theatre of Catalonia (TNC) invites companies that break with conventional norms and embrace risk to its facilities. "These are artists who perform a very important task in expanding the language of theatre," emphasizes TNC director Carme Portaceli. This gathering is part of the ZIP Festival and will take place this year from March 25 to 29. Under the coordination of Judit Pujol, the festival has programmed five productions that will unfold across various spaces within the theatre, from the Sala Tallers and the Sala Petita to the storage areas. To kick off ZIP, the company Atresbandes will premiere Impossible to imagine anything, a piece that draws on the current context of collapse to question uncertainty and emptiness. "It's like a cassette with an A-side and a B-side. The first is the impossibility of imagining anything, of groping in the dark about everything we're experiencing. And the second revolves around the impossibility of not imagining, because imagination is inherent to us," explains one of the company members, Albert Pérez Hidalgo.

French director Séverine Chavrier, whom we met four years ago with And the new ones where I forgot (the adaptation ofThe lime kiln Thomas Bernhard's play), has returned to the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. And it has done so with a very free adaptation of one of William Faulkner's most celebrated but also most complex works, Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner narrates the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen, a poor Mississippi boy in the early 19th century who achieves wealth and becomes a slave-owning tyrant in his quest for social recognition.

The French princess Margaret of Anjou is a fairly important figure in English history. Married by proxy at the age of 16 to Henry VI, she became a powerful queen renowned for her intelligence and political acumen, but also for her unwavering courage, which, as Edward Hall said, made her "more like a man than a woman." In the theater, she is a minor character in four of William Shakespeare's plays (the three parts ofHenry VI and, above all, Richard III), all of them documented from The Holinshed Chronicles (Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland), written between 1528 and 1580. "She-wolf of France, if not worse than the wolves of France," says the Duke of Suffolk in one of them.

Margaret of Anjou has more lines in Shakespeare's plays than any other woman, and even more than King Lear or Othello. And yet, the British playwright never dedicated a play to her. To rectify this injustice, director and playwright Pau Carrió has created The wolf queen, a show created from the character's appearances in the three parts ofHenry VI and in Richard III who finally sees that combative queen. "She has a singular, unique story. She interacts with power, she sees that there are struggles and she fights. In the eyes of other men, she comes to be seen as an evil character, a she-wolf," explains Carrió. The actress responsible for embodying this protagonist is Maria Rodríguez Soto, who is accompanied on stage by six men –Quim Ávila, Pepo Blasco, José Julien, Xavi Ricart, Pau Roca, and David Vert– as well as Queralt Casasayas. The show premieres this Wednesday in the Sala Petita of the TNC.

Mary Magdalene was not a sinful prostitute, but one of the apostles and a companion of Jesus Christ. She stood at the foot of the cross and delivered the good news of the resurrected Christ. Furthermore, she is the central figure in a theatrical production that reclaims the true role of women in history in a show where the captivating audiovisual component largely compensates for the shortcomings of the text and the dramaturgy.

"The story we've been told about Mary Magdalene is a kind of Pretty woman from the first century. What we all think is that she was a sinful and repentant prostitute whom Jesus forgave. But this is a myth,” says Carme Portaceli, director of the National Theatre of Catalonia (TNC), who adds that “none of the canonical gospels say that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.” Where does the archetype come from? What impact has it had on women throughout more than two thousand years of history? Why has it been constructed? Mary MagdaleneThe TNC's big bet for this season.

Like the best circus acts, Catalan theater has taken an even greater leap this year than last. The upward trend in audience numbers continues. It already registered record figures in 2024But by 2025 it has gone even higher, consolidating and surpassing the figure of more than three million viewers and simultaneously increasing revenue. Adding to the year's good news is the opening of a new theater in Barcelona, The Factory, and the birth of a new cycle of theater, Autumn Flashwhich has brought world-class productions to the Catalan capital. The 2025 program featured ambitious shows with well-told and well-performed stories by major companies (what a joy to see so many talented people on stage!), as well as monologues and small-format shows full of depth, featuring actors at their peak. Our theater experts have selected the 10 best shows that graced the program (and the five most important international productions of the year).

There's a deep memory that has taken root in the mind of director and playwright Manel Dueso (Sabadell, 1953). In the 1980s, he met Samba, a young Gambian man who worked felling trees in Sant Hilari Sacalm. One day, a tree fell on him, leaving him a quadriplegic. Dueso met him in the hospital, as Samba shared a room with the director's brother, who had a similar diagnosis. "Samba was very cheerful. I looked after him. We dressed everyone up in ties, we squirted the nurses with syringes. Even in the most brutal places, funny things can happen," Dueso recalls. This is the spirit that permeates his latest show, Jambo BwanaStarring Montse Germán, Antonia Jaume, Àurea Márquez, and Usu Tambadou, this performance can be seen in the Sala Pequeña of the National Theatre of Catalonia from December 17 to January 11.

A little over thirty years have passed since the powerful, caustic and tense proposal that Ariel Garcia Valdès directed of The crown of thorns at the Romea Theatre on December 22, 1994. Many years for a work that, without being one of Josep Maria de Sagarra's best known, is undoubtedly one of his most profound and tragic, and which confirms the linguistic, poetic and dramatic quality of this dramatic poem written in 1930 and which now, in the TNC's standing audience.

The fall of the Berlin Wall opened the gates of heaven to the citizens of so-called Eastern Europe. The defeat of communism promised a new life in democracy that would guarantee the rights restricted by the ferocious socialist dictatorships. They were deluded, because storm clouds quickly covered those skies and joy turned to resignation. This is what the photographer, suffering from fibromyalgia, says, who survives with her husband in a city in one of those countries and who won a prestigious award precisely for her photographs of the fall of the iconic German wall. They came out of the fire and into the embers. The embers of capitalism. The Europe of illusion turned into the Europe of frustration in metaphor. fog from the work of Lluïsa Cunillé winner of the Frederic Roda 2014 prize.

The anguish, fear, and death that inhabit Mercè Rodoreda's novel hovered over the audience of the National Theater of Catalonia at the season opening. The anguish, fear, and atavistic death of the village of pink houses imagined by Rodoreda and the anguish, fear, and death of the thousands of Palestinians murdered by the Israeli government.

Despite being convinced I had tickets to the TNC, where they were premiering a contemporary opera in co-production with the KVS in Brussels and other European theaters, the repetitive electronic music that poured through the open doors of the Sala Grande into the foyer fifteen minutes before the performance was supposed to begin made me doubt. But no. It was the first theme of this elemental and anecdotal historical approach to the Carthaginian general who became the eponym of the conquerors who brought war, and death, around the world, mixed with a supposed revision of the opera's plot. Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell. Ultimately, the aim of the proposal is to denounce war and those who practice it (there is nothing current) in a rabidly contemporary staging where we find text, singing, dance, projections and even live painting.

Is the urge to commit suicide inherited? Can a mother pass this urge on to her child? Is there something genetic about suicide? Based on these questions, and shortly after becoming a mother, British playwright Alice Birch wrote Anatomy of a suicide, premiered in 2017 at the Royal Court in London under the direction of the acclaimed Katie Mitchell, and now arrives at the TNC at a carefully curated address by Glòria Balañà.

Can trauma be transmitted genetically? How can we break inherited patterns so that the cycle isn't inevitable? How do we pick up the legacy of our parents? How do we overcome the suffering of lives that are too fragile? Playwright Alice Birch (Malvern, UK, 1986) wrote Anatomy of a suicide In 2017, in four weeks, shortly after becoming a mother for the first time. The play, which addresses all these questions, was a professional highlight for the British playwright, author of plays such as Curve. She said. Curve again. (2014), screenwriter of the film Lady Macbeth (2016), inspired by the story by Nikolai Leskov, and co-adaptor of the novel Normal people by Sally Rooney on televisionNow, director Glòria Balañà has taken on the challenge of bringing Birch's play to the Sala Petita of the National Theatre of Catalonia (TNC) with a company of 10 actors. Anatomy of a suicide It premieres on Thursday and will be at the TNC until June 8.

In the world of theater, there's a Shakespearean king's surname that isn't pronounced because it's unpleasant. I don't know if Victoria Szpunberg mentioned it during rehearsals for The third escape, but its debut at the National Theatre's Great Hall was threatened by a delay due to an actor's illness and, if that weren't enough, by the massive blackout on Monday during the dress rehearsal. despite everything, the premiere was a success like few others: it is the definitive confirmation of the talent of the Catalan author and director of Argentine origin.

The family history of Victoria Szpunberg (Buenos Aires, 1973) is told through escape. They landed in Barcelona. Szpunberg was four years old and made El Masnou her home. City of Barcelona Award by The categorical imperative (2024) and author of shows such as The weight of a body (2022) and The speaking machine (2007), imagine The third escape an uprooted and banished family that draws inspiration from its own and starts over again in a new country. Starring Clara Segura, the show has made Szpunberg the first woman to direct and write a play at the Sala Grande of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. It will be there from April 24th to June 1st.

The family history of Victoria Szpunberg (Buenos Aires, 1973) is told through flight. Her paternal grandparents, Jewish, left the Ukrainian city of Berdichiv at the beginning of the 20th century to escape the pogroms. Five decades later, the director and playwright's parents fled the military dictatorship in Argentina and ended up in Barcelona. Szpunberg was four years old and made El Masnou her home. The director and playwright, City of Barcelona Award by The categorical imperative (2024) and author of shows such as The weight of a body (2022) and The speaking machine (2007), imagine The third escape an uprooted and banished family that draws inspiration from its own and starts over again in a new country. Starring Clara Segura, the show has made Szpunberg the first woman to direct and write a play at the Sala Grande of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. It will be there from April 24th to June 1st.

When the National Theatre of Catalonia (TNC) decided that it would dedicate a cycle of performing arts to Palestine, The war with Israel in October 2023 had not yet broken out.With the start of the offensive in Gaza, TNC director Carme Portaceli asked the Ministry of Culture what they were going to do. "They told us to go ahead with it anyway, that they would support us," says Portaceli, and so they did. The series Barcelona calling Palestine will bring ten artistic offerings to the TNC from April 9 to 13, with the aim of "breaking clichés about the Arab world" and "turning art into a form of resistance," says Portaceli. This is the second edition of the series, which aims to unite several Mediterranean cities through the performing arts and which in 2024 focused on artists from Beirut.

March is dance time. The Fifteenth Metropolitan Dance Festival is a festival promoted by Barcelona City Council, in which up to twelve municipalities in the metropolitan area collaborate to spread dance far and wide. The eighth edition has arrived with more than 100 performances in theaters, squares, and streets, in addition to other parallel activities scheduled from March 14 to 30. The National Theater (TNC) is collaborating with two interesting and very diverse proposals.