It so happened that during the process of creating the show Better not to say it —about a couple in their second marriage who decide to tell each other everything—the lead actor, Imanol Arias (Riaño, 1956), has recently remarried. "Like the couple in the play, this recent marriage is a union where we try to spend a lot of time together, talk, and above all, take care of each other," explains Arias. On stage, he shares passion, dialogue, and arguments with actress María Barranco, who plays the other half of the story. Written by the French playwright Salomé Lelouch, the production is an adaptation by Pablo Kompel, directed by Claudio Tolcachir. This comedy premiered in Madrid in October and has since played in Buenos Aires (where it drew over 100,000 spectators) and Montevideo. From this Wednesday until April 12, it will be performed at the Teatro Goya, where tickets are practically sold out.

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.

A regular on TV3 productions and in the country's theatres, Aida Oset (Barcelona, ​​​​1983) is one of the most recognizable actresses on the Catalan scene. After her time at the Teatre Lliure, with A species of Alaska, and through the Mercat de les Flors, with Kodama, will take to the stages of the Goya Theatre starting November 5th to play Giulia, one of the three protagonists of The braid, a work based on the book by Laetitia Colombani about three women with seemingly opposite lives but a shared desire for freedom.

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.

It had been many years since actress Emma Suárez had a theatrical project in hand, and even more so since she had set foot in the Goya Theatre. "The last time was with Get off at the Moor, in the 80s. I was a teenager, now I'm a lady," the actress recalls. Although cinema plays an important role in her professional career with films such as The red scab (1993), The gardener's gos(1996), The next skin (2016) andJuliet(2016), Suárez was eager to return to the theater. Now he does so with the stage adaptation ofThe back room, the novel by Carmen Martín Gaite (1925-2000), coinciding with the centenary of the Spanish writer's birth. "The text gave me goosebumps, it moved me, it provoked me, I felt something very powerful, fear and vertigo at the same time," explains Suárez. The show premiered in February at the Teatro de La Abadía in Madrid and will be at the Teatro Goya until July 27, as part of the Grec Festival.

In 2015, playwright and director Lara Díez Quintanilla (Lleida, 1985) traveled across the United States with eight other people in a van. "We were all progressive, feminist, left-wing," recalls the director. But when a friend told a supposedly true story about a couple's sexual ordeal, all masks fell away. "Suddenly, everyone jumped in a very wild way. Possessive instincts surfaced, and we were never the same again," recalls Díez, who is also the author of plays such as Abandoned inheritance (2020), Euphoria (2021) and The spacelessness (2022). Over time, the anecdote began to appear in his life until, in 2022, he appropriated it to write a text for the Temporada Alta Playwriting Tournament. The piece was a finalist and won the Transatlantic Playwriting Tournament. Given this reception, Díez decided to expand it to turn it into a play that he titled Guilty pleasure and which premieres on May 12 at the Goya Theater.