Where are you as a company? “We are in a crisis right now. no bowling. Or yes, there is bowling, but it is not all that is necessary for our survival.
How would you explain this? What’s going on? “Parts are expensive and we are a young company with 10 people traveling on the road. The response from the programmers is that they’ve made the cut this year and they can’t bet on risky stuff. And we’re a risk because we’re young and because not many people know us. And because the theater we do may not like its subscribers”.
Answers from members Gemma Polo and Glòria Ribera. theater company José and his sistersA collective that debuted in 2017 with the following work: Banks are handing out sandwiches and chorizo, and subsequently won two Barcelona Critics’ Awards. A few days ago they went through the Teatros del Canal in Madrid with their fourth work. bad talent contestinside The only concert they’ve signed since they premiered the show at the Teatre Lliure in November 2022. José y sus hermanas is a young company with five members between the ages of 28 and 38, between Generation Z and Generation Y, but they are already becoming veterans as they have kicked off many festivals in these years and searched for common. The producers under the rocks have sent many files and hundreds of emails and are beginning to understand what this risk-free means.
“We don’t believe this lack of risk is due to the fact that these people actually see their theater’s economy in danger. this goes beyond programmers and those who run cultural apparatuses,” explains Polo and Ribera, “what is not is a political commitment because in this country, there are no practices to be included in the change, new perspectives, new perspectives that the young people normally bring. This is a structural problem because there is no state cultural policy that protects us as workers and youth, and it is not understood that the presence of such products on both public and private billboards will make society better, richer.” .
In the last piece, José and his sisters, disappointment of youth with unfulfilled promisesA culture of (fake) effort and 24/7 productivity in a work that connects with the current state of a generation of creators who are not yet 30 and have barely had the opportunity to be programmed in the public domain after being educated in drama schools. and private theatres. Creators who link scholarships and residencies, produce with their own money, combine theater or dance with a part-time job, and have barely learned how to communicate with programmers, distributors and journalists, how to start and run a company. or how a grant is justified. In this geography full of deficiencies, Girona Z Festival.
unicorns in sight
Jordi Duran, director of Festival Z at the University of Girona, said: “We’re starting to find that it’s very difficult for companies to access the labor market, there are too many cold doors.” The School of Arts (ERAM) from the Joan Bosch Foundation, which made its debut in 2021, is in the midst of a pandemic: “We’ve done market research in Girona for the last three seasons and we’ve seen it at festivals and festivals. theaters Only 4% of the nearly 400 planned performances were directed, written or choreographed by people under the age of 30.. This seemed like a warning sign to us, and we decided to set up a space where we could schedule, get paid, and encourage working in a relaxed atmosphere.”
Celebrating the third time on July 6-9 with the slogan of Z Festival Unicorns in sight!will host 17 shows at different venues in Girona and Salt, again pre-selected by a jury under the age of 30 and approved by a senior jury of industry professionals. The competition includes three categories: already finished shows, a Cache increased from 3,500 to 1,500 euros, according to the size of the company; A second method is open rehearsals of work in progress by incumbent companies equipped with 3,000 euros, and the third is programming “embryos” of companies that present their projects to programmers and distributors for 10 minutes.
“The important thing for us is to be able to communicate with professionals beyond the companies that give a concert at the festival,” Duran said. It’s very difficult for programmers, but programmers look for pieces that are agreed upon and that they like, infallible.” And this risk-allergic theatrical system is the reality, according to Eva Ferré, coordinator of the competition’s professional events, “the need for appropriate spaces where they can show their work, where they are paid a fair wage.” It faces these creators, determined by “and where they can try and stumble.”
Who represents us?
“Do you think your reality is on stage? Is the industry giving you back a disturbing mirror that you didn’t see yourself reflected in? If no one is representing us, should we (re)introduce ourselves?” Some of the questions that La Última Mierda Collective, including Elaine Grayling, will ask at an assembly within the festival program: look this lead them exploding using Z interpreters to reproduce old speech”. Grayling, 26, and ERAM-educated, combined landscape projects with a part-time job as a rent-paying administrative assistant, devoting much of her energy to finding spaces and town centers to rehearse and scholarships. . and residences. He says he likes to think that things can change, powered by collective and non-commercial relationships: I see people of my generation who start working in other fields, say no to precarious employment, and start working. To this moderate optimism, however, Grayling adds the demand for spaces of representation created by “non-ghetto egalitarian” youth.
Gerard Franch is 27 years old and his festival Rule, A “so fireworks, so fag” musical theater piece by Massapà Bedbé’s company is about three characters – Petra, Gina and Mina – who have been distraught and settled in an old place that has been a brothel for 40 days and where they want to settle down. A club of real madrid. “We wrote the piece during our two-month residency at a municipal center in Barcelona,” he explains, “and in We pay tribute to all dissidents from Barcelona in the 80s and Ocaña, and our muse, the opera singer Manuela Trasovares”.
After setting up half a dozen projects since leaving the Institut del Teatre in 2019, Franch comes to the festival and reveals to this newspaper that he is his own. Living “from my juggling with scholarships, housing and grants”. In this theatrical universe he is trying to survive, Franch identifies a “belt plug” that is the heir to the Transition in the management and programming of spaces, which means “we are used to seeing the same faces, the same texts all the time”. do and invest in the same ways of creating new audiences that are not just consuming a theatrical poster with a well-known actor or actress”.
As Julia Godino, who attended the festival with two street dance performances with Alexa Moya, explained, fatigue is added to all of this. So A Propeller and Picnic on the Moon: “What’s going on is that the creator is also the producer, the distributor, the technician and everything. Most of the creation time is wasted, and Alexa and I sometimes have to send a lot of emails, and when it comes time to rehearse, we don’t feel like it anymore because you’re doing thirty jobs in one but it’s gone because there’s no money. The other option is You do it and that’s it.” Will it make up for all that fatigue? “I have the ambition and the desire to keep going, we’re always breaking ground and it gives us results,” says Julia.