The Grec festival reinvents itself during these times of pandemic. And with the will that the new inventions remain. The great summer festival in Barcelona has not only managed to be held in person this year – while most major European festivals have chosen to cancel – but it has also created a parallel programming outside theaters, ranging from routes to discover the city’s American legacy to works and lectures broadcast in streaming or new proposals created expressly for the online universe, such as Sodom by Roger Bernat and Núria Martínez Vernís, 12 hours with eight writers giving the reply through chat channels to marked with Sade. To the Marquis and the public who follow them.
Is he Greek Open, more of 40 proposals that they constitute a parallel festival and that in many cases they take advantage of the programming originally planned for this year, but due to lack of rehearsals it has not been possible to premiere. There will be live broadcasts of the Grec shows, such as the opening on the 30th, To touch!, by BTV, and there will also be a festival through the networks or even by radio, podcasts, dramatized readings …
Image of A galaxy of fireflies, which is part of the Latin American Connections of Grec Obert (Kenneth Santos)
The Grec Obert will be divided into four sections. As the festival had to be dedicated to Latin America but artists cannot travel, the first section will be Latin American Connections. It will publicize the scenic reality of the area and will include great theater figures such as Daniel Veronese, Gabriel Calderón, Manuela Infante and Los Colochos.
Of Daniel Veronese you can see a work in streaming from Buenos Aires, A depressed person, a text by David Foster Wallace. Guillermo Calderón will speak about the moment of current revolution in Chile, of what happened on the streets and no longer goes through the pandemic. And the company José and his sisters will present in web format, as if it were a museum, their work on the predator tourism and, says Alejandro Curiel, “how we have built a country that is sustained by sun, beach and beach bars.” A work in progress carried out together with the Chilean Marco Layera, who triumphed this year in the Lliure with Landscapes not to color.
The protagonists of Souvenirs 2, at the Antic Teatre (GREEK FESTIVAL)
And ten small rooms in Barcelona that each had to present a work in collaboration with creators and rooms in as many Latin American countries have created the website teatresdeproximitat.cat, where 22 activities will be seen, from workshops, to audiovisual pieces, dramatized readings and colloquia, with special emphasis on Brazil. And it is that the Antic Teatre will offer from 3 to 30 July some Anti-fascist days online and free in which it is included Kidnapped Brazil, the ongoing project of the destruction of culture and thought carried out by Bolsonaro, they assure. There will be conferences, video forums, video performances, workshops and the latest work of Marta Galán will be seen on video, a community creation with the neighborhood neighbors, Souvenirs 2, the terrified and the revolted, which narrates the traces of war on the bodies who lived them
The protagonists of Assedegats, by Oriol Broggi (GREEK FESTIVAL)
Fila cero will host, in various formats, the process of creating some shows that should have premiered at the Grec and will do so during the season, such as The Wizard of Oz, directed by David Selvas, which will be in version Spotify. The Becket workshop will be dedicated to the dramaturgy of distances and La Perla 29 will offer virtual seats for the show. Thirsty, of Wadji Mouawad and directed by Oriol Broggi. That it will be a show that can be seen inside the theater with little capacity, or in the outside plaza of the theater with a beer and a screen. Or in theaters in Manresa, Vic and Manacor that will broadcast it live.
For that there will be a double set of cameras and screens… like the world we are living in now. The cameras will be part of the montage itself, which talks about the thirst for life, of adolescents who see that the world that the elders have left them is not well and they need to say it. The cameras will allow viewers of the interior to see the faces of the protagonists on screens, which may be somewhat removed by the necessary distances. In addition, the actors themselves interact with other actors recorded and projected on plastic, a homemade holography. In turn, all this will be recorded by other cameras and broadcast in the plaza outside and in the other theaters.
The Dimonis installation, in Cabosanroque, which can be seen in El Born (Jose Hevia / FESTIVAL GREC)
The Grec on foot will offer walks with the support of podcasts … or actors. Thus, in collaboration with Casa Amèrica Catalunya, they propose tours to discover the heritage of our American past or routes that follow novels that take us from Barcelona to Latin America and vice versa. For the tours, you have to download a free podcast and with it you can discover a different city that is very American. The route goes from the porticoes of Xifré where the Set portes is located – which at the time was the most expensive building and the first with running water, so it was the first photographed in Spain, and had seven doors because the master was a Mason – how many times has the statue of the marquis de comillas been put on and taken off, how Columbus statue it was done to give value to the Catalans of that trip or how there is a small sculpture to machin after the Viceroy: he came to the city fleeing from the Nazis. But you can also go to the Botanical Garden with the actors from Life (how the trees saved our lives), by Lali Álvarez Garriga, who will read texts from the piece that they should have taken to the Grec.
And in the Grec talks there will be proposals like that of Poetic consultations, coordinated by Andreu Gomila, Josep Pedrals and Martí Sales, and in which the public signs up to receive calls in which you will recite a poem. You can even point out your preferences. And you can read the verses actors like Lluís Soler, Sílvia Bel, Alba Pujol, Anna Alarcón and Iván Morales.
An image of the Transits project, on transsexuality, which is part of the Grec Obert Latin American Connections (FESTIVAL GREC)
The traditional Obrador of the Sala Beckett will reach its 15th edition with courses, dramatized readings, talks and shows under the title The new exceptions, who wants to question the expression new normality, “as if normalities were desirable the theater, which has a vocation of permanent exceptionality,” says Toni casares, director of the Beckett. Which tells that this year they have incorporated virtual and outdoor activity into this meeting with European and American playwrights. There will be even a colloquium in the Poblenou Central Park with the president of Doctors without borders. There will also be dramatized readings outdoors and the courses with foreign creators will be online.
“No festival in the world today has such a density of proposals to accompany it,” said Cesc Casadesús, director of the Grec.
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