If memory has been the central axis of the good season that now ends at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (TNC), rescuing from oblivion all the Natàlias that Colometa could have been and the victims of a women's asylum during Francoism, the next season follows suit and does not go far, wanting to provoke questions among spectators again when the curtain falls. All those voices that inhabit the margins will be the protagonists of the 2024/2025 season, making them speak after, also, too much silence. "Among the synonyms of marginal is everything that is secondary, insignificant, lateral, peripheral, separate, alternative, non-commercial, independent... But also a place from which to escape what society has assigned us, a place of rebellion, of nonconformity, an alternative, a reaction," points out the director of the TNC, Carme Portaceli, on the eve of her fourth season at the helm of the theater.
This is where the many women who have been punished so many times in history fully enter. Great names like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina will take over the Sala Gran of the TNC, with Ariadna Gil playing the role of an unfaithful woman, or a woman in love, but also a mother in a society that condemns her. Directed by Portaceli, who has already dealt with the similar Madame Bovary, it will be one of the highlights of the season, with a cast that will include Borja Espinosa, Eduard Farelo, Miriam Moukhles, Bernat Quintana, and Bea Segura. After its premiere in Barcelona, it will tour Europe. The other side will be given by the adaptation of Elena Ferrante's The Days of Abandonment, the author who "best explains the miseries of patriarchy" for Portaceli, focusing on a woman abandoned by her husband in a show in French.
The unfaithful woman has always been punished, but also the woman who cannot be a mother, bearing the guilt of a failure that pushes her into thorny isolation. Federico García Lorca's Yerma is well known, but Àngel Guimerà also addressed this issue in L'aranya, a rarely performed play that will now come to the TNC. With actress Mima Riera, Jordi Prat i Coll's dramaturgy will move the action of the Canary Island author's play to Francoist Girona, originally set in early 20th-century Barcelona. It will be next season's play that will tour Catalan theaters. The dictatorship, with a legacy that makes us criticize and judge others so much according to Portaceli, will also be present in María Velasco's Primera sangre, with all the latent prejudices in the country exploding before the murder of a minor in a school. Or through silenced writers like Rosa Maria Arquimbau, a writer and journalist whose career was cut short by the Civil War, now reclaimed with the recovery of Marie, la roja.
The so-called witches, that mysterious figure who served to purge all evils, more invented than real, that those in power could weave to frighten anyone who doubted, could not be absent. Jan Vilanova's Vosaltres, les bruixes is a documentary theater proposal that will pay tribute to all those people, mostly women, victims of cruel persecution.
Unfortunately, war has intensified its proximity in recent years, as can be sensed in the numerous TNC proposals that address it. Victoria Szpunberg's La tercera fuga stands out, tracing the history of three exiles in Ukraine, Argentina, and Barcelona, with a cast that will include Clara Segura at the end of the 2024/2025 season. Sol Picó will also approach exiles, with a family play that will talk about the victims of the Syrian war. Palestine will also be present, with small shows by artists who will leave, if they can, a town that bleeds day by day.
A total of 39 proposals, a few less than this season, will make up the new season, with other titles such as the musical Ànima, with a cast of 14 actors and 10 musicians, a strong bet that has recently been seen in Els Watson, the dance of the London company Humanhood with roots in Sitges, or the pact with the devil imagined by Angélica Liddell (five and a half hours!). It remains to be seen if the TNC manages to repeat this season's success, with more than 126,500 spectators and an 83% occupancy. "These are extraordinary figures," Portaceli remarks. In addition, for the second consecutive year, a record number of subscriptions has been achieved, with a total of 5,700. With the lack of new budgets in the Generalitat, the theater will maintain its budget for the next season at 16 million euros.