Chilean playwright Pablo Manzi wrote Human Stampede after the Chilean Social Outbreak, the massive demonstrations that the country experienced between 2019 and 2020 as a protest against the high cost of living, socioeconomic inequalities, and the crisis of legitimacy of the political system. "We see that something similar is now happening in Central Europe. This protest is emerging, but there are still no words to articulate it," says Manzi. That is why, he adds, this is a very good moment to premiere the Bonobo company's show on European stages. Human Stampede arrives this Friday at Canal de Salt, as part of the Temporada Alta festival, and will then continue its tour through Italy. "When we came last year with Temis, we already detected that our themes were in dialogue with your political reality," adds Manzi.

On the eve of Saint Narcís, actress Àngels Gonyalons offered an excellent dramatized reading of stories by Caterina Albert at the Teatre de Salt, as part of the Temporada Alta program, in co-production with the Festival Clàssics of Barcelona. Four stories by the writer from L'Escala, known by the pseudonym Víctor Català, truly poignant, with touches of humor but very harsh and striking, of an impressive modernity that denounces, without mincing words, the sexism and violence of the patriarchal society. They are short stories from different collections about the lives of women in small rural towns at the turn of the 20th century, involving forced marriages, rapes, and murders. Poet Blanca Llum Vidal was in charge of choosing the stories and selecting some fragments, and Sergi Belbel signs the direction, intelligently guiding Gonyalons' reading, who was very committed and communicative.

Around the time of the premiere of Bach, in 2004 at the Espai Lliure, the dancer and choreographer of Mal Pelo María Muñoz (Valencia, 1963) became pregnant with her son Sam. "I can practically say that I grew up with this piece," the boy explains. Two decades later, the Ramis-Muñoz family –formed by Pep Ramis and Maria Muñoz and their children Martí, Paula, and Sam– has united to transform that Bach into a joint creation that emphasizes the idea of transmission in dance. The new version of the show, titled Bach en família, premiered in Paris in February and now arrives at the Canal de Salt for two performances, which will take place this Thursday and are part of the Temporada Alta festival. It is no coincidence that this creation by Mal Pelo reaches Catalonia through the Girona festival. Throughout the 35-year history of Temporada Alta, the company has performed there 24 times. "They are the group that has stepped onto the festival's stages the most times," highlights the event's director, Narcís Puig.

The Argentine company Piel de Lava already raised expectations four years ago, when it performed for the first time at the Temporada Alta Festival with its star show, Petróleo. That piece, which questions masculinity through four workers on an oil rig, became the most anticipated play of the festival. Now Pilar Gamboa, Elisa Carricajo, Laura Paredes and Valeria Correa –the four members of the company, who share authorship, direction and performance of all their productions– return to Catalonia for a double bill. Petróleo will be performed for the first time in Barcelona, this Monday and Tuesday at La Villarroel, as part of the Flaix de Tardor Festival, and will mark the debut of Piel de Lava in the Catalan capital. And taking advantage of the connections between Flaix de Tardor and Temporada Alta (both festivals are promoted by Bitò), the company will also premiere its latest production in Girona, Parlamento, which can be seen on Friday at the Teatre de Salt. All performances of both shows are already sold out.

Among all the names of great contemporary European creators, there is one that returns to Temporada Alta after a few years without setting foot in it. It is the Flemish director Guy Cassiers (Antwerp, 1960) –director of memorable shows such as The Granddaughter of Mr. Linh (2018) and Le sec et l'humide (2015)–, who arrives at the Girona festival with Thésée, sa vie nouvelle, a stage adaptation of the eponymous novel by Camille de Toledo published in 2020. The work premieres at the Canal in Salt, where it will be performed on Friday and Saturday.

Some time ago, the Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (Antwerp, 1976) took it for granted that he would not return to a stage. The artist set aside his role as a dancer and focused on creation, with works that have traveled around the world and moved thousands of spectators. In Catalonia, it has been possible to see, among others, Puz/zle (2013), Faun/Noetic (2024) and Ihsane (2024, just at the last Grec festival). In a meeting with the circus artist Martin Zimmermann, both began to reflect on the profession today, aging, and the fear of no longer being on stage. The conversation led to the need to create a show and the importance of Larbi also being present on stage. This is how Has been was conceived, which inaugurates the Temporada Alta festival this Sunday with a performance at the Municipal Theatre of Girona.

There are two great creative engines that keep appearing in the works of playwright and director Llàtzer Garcia: siblings and death. Regarding the former, they had appeared in other shows by the creator such as La pols (2014), which also explored the loss of a father. And he had also spoken of death in Al final, les visions (2022). Now Garcia approaches both themes from a different perspective: the occurrence of an unexpected accident that turns the lives of three more or less united sisters into a tragedy. The show is titled Grans bardisses and last year it won the Quim Masó award. After cancelling its premiere at the last Grec festival, it arrives on October 11th at the Teatre de Salt, as part of the Temporada Alta festival, and from February 25th it will be seen at the Teatre Lliure.

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.

An interest in faith and spirituality has often accompanied the actor Lluís Homar, but for some time now it has also a way of understanding the professionThis passion found its perfect partner before the pandemic, when it coincided with the musician Emili Brugalla and together they performed the recital Soul and wordwhich fused the poetry of Saint John of the Cross with the work of Frederic Mompou. From this emerged a different way of understanding the stage, the text, and the music, which is now being replicated with other protagonists: the chapter "The Grand Inquisitor" ofThe Brothers Karamazov of Dostoevsky and the spiritual works of Bach and Messiaen. The result is a performance featuring Homar on spoken word and Brugalla on piano, accompanied by Vesko Stambolov, with whom he shares a duo. Straddling the line between concert and recital, the creators define this work as a sacramental act. Under the title Bach-Dostoevsky-MessiaenThe play premieres this Sunday at the Girona Auditorium as part of the Temporada Alta festival.

After many years immersed in autofiction, Bárbara Mestanza (Barcelona, ​​1990) finds herself in the opposite camp. The playwright, director, and actress—creator of shows such as All the flowers (2020), The ugliest woman in the world (2021) and Dirty (2020)—leaves behind montages inspired by personal experience and imagines a story of persecution and cancellation starring Mae, a journalist who led the Me Too movement. Some time later, the accused aggressor attempts suicide, and one of the victims publicly states that she did not want to appear in the article. All of this culminates in a thriller about professional errors, abuse of power and social judgments with Mestanza herself, Rosa Boladeras and Júlia Molins on stage. Cutting off a foot with a chainsaw It premieres this Friday at the Teatre de Salt, as part of Temporada Alta, and will be performed at the Sala Beckett from January 14th to February 8th.

Actors Francesc Cuéllar and Lola Marceli met six years ago while working on a daily series. Central Market (RTVE), where they played a mother and son. Production ended in 2021, but they both wanted to continue working together. From that desire, a new project was born. Jusqu'ici, tout va (2022), Cuéllar's first film and the seed of the show HonestyThe film, which premieres on Saturday, December 6th at the Temporada Alta festival in Girona, will then run at the Akademia Theatre in Barcelona from December 12th to January 11th.

"I hate Putin." So says Margarita, a Ukrainian girl kidnapped from her home and given to a Russian family. An irrefutable condemnation that refutes the false narrative of Russian propaganda. And a war crime according to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which in 2023 issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president... and which becomes a reality in Margarita's mind in the play. The Hague (The Hague) by the Ukrainian playwright based in Barcelona, Sasha Denisova, which has been programmed at the Municipal Theatre of Girona within the High Season festival.

It was after seeing The madman and the shirt, the flagship work of Nelson Valente (Buenos Aires, 1971), that T de Teatre decided to sign the Argentine playwright and director for their next show. "We saw that play and went crazy. We all shared the feeling that he was a director who could take us out of our comfort zones, put us in a cocktail shaker, and shake us up," explains actress Mamen Duch. "That text has brilliant dialogue that captivated us. Nelson's plays are ensemble pieces, but they touch on relatable themes; people can identify with them, and they have a humor that can be uncomfortable," adds Àgata Roca. In recent years, Valente's appearances on the Catalan stage have become increasingly frequent. Last season he premiered Amnesia at the Teatre Nacional and, in 2020, also worked with a Catalan company in The dogs...among other productions. That's why it made perfect sense that Valente's response to T de Teatre's request was affirmative.

Six characters meet at a mountain refuge. Each speaks a different language. The audience doesn't know who they are or what they're doing in this cabin, and perhaps they still won't know when the performance ends. Swiss director Christoph Marthaler is the master of stage ambiguity, and in He submits He puts it into practice without abandoning the humor and nostalgia that characterize his creations. The production, which can be seen this Friday and Saturday at the Canal de Salt, offers the opportunity to see the work of "one of the great theater directors of the early 21st century, with his own unique and surreal language," says Narcís Puig, director of Temporada Alta. Marthaler has a long-standing relationship with the Girona festival, where previous works such as No idea (2021), King Size (2014) and The travels of Lina Bögli (2011).

The Uruguayan playwright and director Gabriel Calderón (Montevideo, 1982) has become a recurring name on the Catalan theater scene in recent years. He has achieved this by bringing shows from his native country and, above all, by creating new productions with Spanish companies. In 2018 he premiered Let the actors be destroyed at the National Theatre of Catalonia, in 2021 he promoted the brilliant and successful Story of a wild boar and now works in Oh! Misery will make us happyThe play, which premieres on November 28th at Temporada Alta and can be seen from December 4th at the Teatre Lliure, features robots acting as actors. dream team Starring: Pere Arquillué, Laura Conejero, Joan Carreras, and Daniela Brown.

Greta wants to commit suicide It is one of the first works by a young Angélica Liddell and the first to win one of the many awards that would follow, the Ciudad de Alcorcón Theatre Prize in 1988. Since then, death and suicide as a final poetic act have been omnipresent in the intense stage production of the artist born into the artist. In fact, her last two acclaimed shows revolved around her own funeral –Voodoo (3318) Blixen, in 2023 – and that of Ingmar Bergman –Dämon. Bergman's Funeral, in 2024–. The creator delivers one or more shows per year, so now she premieres in Temporada Alta Sepukku. Mishima's funeral or the pleasure of dyingwhich would close a false trilogy that resonates, and how, with suicide as one of the fine arts and death as the artist's aesthetic ideal.

In these times of virtual queues and Tickets that disappear in a few minutesThe Temporada Alta festival experienced an unusual situation at the end of summer: tickets for the two performances of the show Seppuku. Mishima's funeral, Tickets for Angélica Liddell's show sold out in just four minutes. "I thought the system was malfunctioning. It's never happened to us before," explains Narcís Puig, director of the Girona festival. The feat was even more remarkable because the artist was inviting the audience to the Salt Theatre at an unusual hour: 5:30 in the morning, both for the premiere of the work this Saturday and for the performance this Sunday.

For years, the choreographer and flamenco dancer María Pagés (Seville, 1963) uses art to reclaim the role of women through classical works and also in the contemporary world. "Ever since I visited the Prado Museum for the first time and saw that there wasn't a single painting on display by a woman, I've felt the need to highlight the female role in art," says the artist. This is the path she has followed with shows such as I, Carmen, which could be seen at Temporada Alta in 2016, and which continues now with From ScheherazadeIt is a large-scale production, with 14 performers on stage, which will premiere at the Teatre Jardí in Figueres this Saturday as part of the Girona festival.

The day her father suffered a heart attack, Mexican writer Conchi León (Mérida, 1973) began to write. From that urgent need emerged a text that delves into her childhood memories, marked by the brutal domestic violence perpetrated by her father and her inability to confront him as an adult. Young lionThe show, which premieres this Sunday in Girona as part of the Temporada Alta festival, delves into the artist's most intense memories, but without losing its sense of humor, observing his family with a critical yet tender eye and attempting to heal the deep wounds they inflicted.

The Argentine playwright Romina Paula (Buenos Aires, 1979) and her company are old friends of the Catalan public: in 2011 the play The whole time, and later at the Teatro de Salt. Since then, this work has become a benchmark of contemporary Argentine theater, and now Temporada Alta itself has included it in its Barcelona Flash de Otoño at the Teatre Lliure from October 21 to 23. Furthermore, a few days earlier, on October 18 and 19, the same festival scheduled a show from two years ago at the La Planeta venue in Girona, Shadows, of courseThe performers, Esteban Bigliardi, Esteban Lamothe, Susana Pampín, and Pilar Gamboa, are the same as in 2011, a significant milestone considering their busy schedules.