The show 'Saeta' by Javier Aranda arrives at the Fundació Joan Brossa

A show full of contrasts between the most classic and the most modern, or between the ridiculous and the sacred, where the boundaries between the professions of actor and puppeteer, which have marked the trajectory of the performer Javier Aranda, are blurred. This is the proposal with which the Aragonese actor and director intends to captivate the Barcelona public with the work Saeta, which will be performed at the Centre de les Arts Lliures of the Fundació Joan Brossa starting next Thursday. For nine performances (from Wednesday to Sunday), the spectator will witness an intimate and striking journey into the abyss of death, which begins – as it could not be otherwise – with the sound of a saeta. On stage, there is a wreath of white flowers, someone appears carrying a coffin, and the voice of a spirit is heard, but then everything collapses. And it is that, in this comic tragedy, nothing is what it seems. 

Spectacle full of contrasts

Saeta is part of the Expandit program of IF Barcelona, the benchmark festival for object and puppet theatre. Puppets are precisely what take up a large part of Aranda's work. A show in which, as he himself advances, he explores and combines everything that the two professions that have marked his theatrical career have brought him. “I mix both worlds because, in reality, I have never known where the border is between text theatre, the more serious kind, and comic theatre,” he points out.

With Saeta, Aranda wants to break with his previous work, “of a smaller format, on a table, simpler and more straightforward” and offer the public “a groundbreaking proposal, based on the here and now, on what I am and what I feel, even questioning myself if my current self is the result of all those people in my environment who are already dead”. A show closer to performance, which combines “humor, emotion, and love” and which, he emphasizes, “seeks to make spectators have fun, be moved, and reflect on love and on who they are, what they do, and why they do what they do”.

Living and assertive work

With his new show, Aranda also seeks to assert that puppets "also have a place in conventional theaters", even though they are often underestimated in usual circuits. A genre that allows the actor to explore and keep an open mind, even encouraging each performance to be different from the previous one. “Saeta is a living work in which there is a certain margin for improvisation that I don't think will ever close," he states. A show that, after being tested last year at the Fira de Titelles de Lleida – where it received three awards, including best show – officially premiered in November 2025 at the Teatro del Mercado in Zaragoza, Aranda's hometown, and was part of the Festival Temporada Alta in Girona. Now, after a few days touring Navarra and Euskadi, it finally arrives at the Centre de les Arts Lliures of the Fundació Joan Brossa in Barcelona with the aim of captivating the audience of the Catalan capital.