The co-founder and co-director of the performing arts company, founded in Moià in 1979, is an ambassador of Barcelona, producing large-scale shows all over the world: operas, plays, festivals, inaugurations...
The memory of '92 serves us to talk about the future, about global consciousness, about "immersive" theater and, above all, about ships. That is, about the floating bellies that sail through their lives.
--- You have just done a show about a ship for Open Arms. From what I've followed, ships are very important to you.
--- This ship, the OPENARMS 1, is still too new. You can tell that the captain and the pilot still fear it. They are the ones in charge on board, you know, but we would like them to get closer to the audience on the docks and they don't dare. Being a rescue ship, it has engines capable of a lot of reprise and it shouldn't cause so much trouble. They have two cranes to be able to make large human nets.
--- The symbol of La Fura.
--- Yes, we have performed it all over the planet and it is what identifies us most. By the way, what a great word, xarxa, don't you think? The two x's it contains already form a net.
--- Wow, now that you mention it...
--- Well, a human net needs machines that can hold at least 1,000 kilos. Look at the name Open Arms, open arms. In 2017 we already did a concert with them for refugees, Mare Nostrum, at the Palau Sant Jordi.
--- I've had you in mind since TV3's Arsenal. A lot of water has passed under the bridge.
--- And Estoc de Pop, don't forget. La Fura has survived over time because we haven't repeated ourselves, we have only maintained the furero DNA.
--- What is that DNA?
--- An infinite wave, a sample that creates a sea. A mantra. Everyone carries a fury inside. I believe that deep down our constant is subversion. Notice that, before, what was subversive was the scream. So we screamed. Now what is subversive is silence, and we are silent. That is: we don't always do the same thing, never, but we always subvert.
--- Tell me more about this obsession with ships.
--- I can tell you about three. Well, first I have to explain that I am "the one with the boats," because I was a laundry sailor. In Horta d'Avinyó, in Bages, I lived a childhood like Rousseau's: I didn't know civilization, I didn't even know Spanish. I listened to José Guardiola (Di papá / dónde está / el buen Dios…)…
--- Ugh.
--- … Without water, without light, dirty, losing my shoe… And relating in Moià with the children of the workers, who were Spanish children, there I think Fura began. They were so wild, they broke a tooth. And I remember that then my mother bought me a boat, which I took to the stream to play. Well, this is boat number one.
--- Okay.
--- The second, the boat on wheels at the Olympic Stadium at the opening of the '92 Games. It made us immensely popular. Before winning the competition, we had a strong dilemma: "Aren't we becoming too commercial?" I was the only one who defended that yes, because it was a challenge. It was something that was going to happen only once in many generations. What happened? We presented ourselves, we won, and amidst all the doubts, we decided to go ahead.
"We don't always do the same thing, never, but we always subvert"
--- I don't think it harmed them to be "commercial."
--- In '81 we were apprentices. We did street theater, like the Comediants. And in '83-'84 we were already grown up, and we had achieved it by subverting the street. Because the street belongs to everyone, and abandoned places too, that's why we went to factories and industrial estates: there's no stage, the audience is on the stage and the scenography is reality. Now that there's so much talk about "immersive theater" with little screens, but popular festivals have always been immersive! The more primary the art, the more immersive it is: look at the Patum, the Carnival, the gegants, the castells…
--- And the name?
--- Nothing, one of us said "Fura" and the other said "Baus" (which is the name of a torrent in Moià full of ash where we used to play) and in the end we decided "La Fura dels Baus." I like it for its vocal phonetics, U-A-A-U. In Spanish we have had some problems, because they think it means "The Fury of the Bulls."
--- They did integral theater.
--- And we still do. We expose the good and the bad, the pain and the pleasure. Life has pain. And the stage must be as complete as possible, the best is on the street and for the public to touch you, get close, look closely... This is 100% based on Mediterranean festivals (bacchanals, holidays...).
--- And you end up putting on an unforgettable show at the Olympic Games.
--- The oars were of Phoenician inspiration, Barcelona was a perfect argument as a city of passage, from Hannibal to Mediterranean merchants or Don Quixote, who calls it "a welcoming inn"... The oars carried the letters of the Phoenician alphabet, and the driving force of the ship was two rugby teams! And we went through storms, monsters, and we also put in pollution, the AIDS virus, death, ignorance, war...
--- A good seafood paella.
--- The image of the bleeding children went around the world. It had never been done before. Remember we were in the middle of the Balkan war!
--- Less Disney and more raw reality.
--- Do you remember the '82 World Cup? The child with the soccer ball in the center, where did a Dove of Peace come from? We wanted that spectacular effect.
"We expose the good and the bad, the pain and the pleasure. Life has pain. And the stage must be as complete as possible"
--- Now he comes from a great show, in Sicily.
--- Euripides' Requiem, based on The Bacchae, a great Greek tragedy, the last one he wrote. We did it in the Greek theater of Syracuse, an authentic Greek theater (it was the southernmost city of the Empire, it came to have a million inhabitants). Socrates only went to see Euripides' plays, and this is a kind of "return to the gods": after a war, he builds a kind of return to the subconscious and dedicates it to Bacchus. That is to say, reason is all very well, but you must make peace with your dark side, your psyche, if you don't want to transform into an idiot. Socrates dies drinking hemlock, but Euripides, on the other hand, committed suicide by letting himself be devoured by dogs.
--- Should Barcelona do this exercise?
--- Our Olympic Games show was precisely about searching the city's subconscious.
--- How do you manage to produce shows of this magnitude?
--- In Syracuse, a festival that is already 100 years old, one of the oldest in Europe, hires us. For them, it is very important to find an eminent, highly recognized translator to translate the text into Italian. And each year they choose a different translator. They usually hire us a year in advance, but the important thing in these works is the chorus of voices: the tragedy begins with easy rhymes and then evolves and confronts ideas.
--- Do you know I'm still missing the third ship?
--- Oh, yes. The third ship. You know it very well, it's the NAUMÓN, I think you presented one of your books on it.
--- Explain it.
--- Well, this ship has crossed the Strait of Gibraltar up to 18 times. And it has gone as far as the China Sea. Performing naumachias, tributes to the sea and denouncing wars, but with a text. And I would also add the NAUMÓN 2, which we now have with a latest-generation rigid sail based on Jacques Cousteau's. It will be a floating spectacle all over the world.
"Think that they all seem to us to be floating! A ship reminds us that we were fetuses"
--- After all, we are all in the same boat.
--- We will dedicate this show to Oceans Cities, an international network to promote sustainable ocean cities, through the Institute of Marine Sciences. It will depart from Barcelona, on the occasion of the America's Cup (or before, because around those dates we will be in America). In 2018 we presented the new sail, in 2000 we won the competition called by the UN and now we are already executing it.
--- Seek the subconscious to be conscious.
--- And volta al món i torna al Born. You cannot escape yourself, no matter how far you go. Being in the NAUMÓN is like entering the belly of a whale, an oven, a warm belly… Think that they all seem to us to be floating! A ship reminds us that we were fetuses. One day you told me something about ships in feminine...
--- Yes, that in English ships are the only object with gender.
--- This! They are women! We will use this someday, you see? She. I love it.
--- Anyway, you don't stop. And finally: nothing else in Barcelona?
--- Bellini's Norma, last July, directed by Àlex Ollé. No matter how far we go, we will always be from here.