- Proximity aesthetics
We have always been convinced that great stories, may they be the oldest or the most contemporary, have the strength to reach the depths of the spirit. Theater is our way of looking at the world and talking to it, of sharing it. We have created a close, detailed and actor-based theatre, born from the exchange between different experienced voices, and where the audience accomplices to the process, a very unique treat of La Perla 29.
From our beggings we have opted for repertory theatre, approached great texts without complexes, with a particular look, inspired by the words of great dramatists of the past and the present. This same concern has led us to make new creation shows from non-theatrical texts; adaptations of poetry and narrative to the dramatic form, which allow us to rediscover the ancient art of the theatre.
It is difficult to define what 'art theatre' consists of, and that is why we have never stopped looking for it, actually, this is the starting point for our artistic and production research. Under this expression we gather many references that we have been carrying for a long time and others that we discover in each production.
Jean-Guy Lecat and Peter Brook's conception of performance space, the experience of the Teatre Lliure being born as a private theatre with a public vocation... In all of them we recognise a certain way of understanding theatre space, the treatment of stage materials, the repertoire, a way of building the relationship between actors and spectators, the creation of an audience, the management of a creation center, the life of an artistic trouppe, the impulse of commitment to what is being done... In short, the universe that compounds our collective imagination.
The aesthetics of proximity emphasize every detail of the viewer's experience from the moment he walks through the doors of the theater. Let it all be shown without artifice, because much of the scenic poetry lays on its most prosaic and human sides. La Perla 29 has a very human complexion: the theater staff, the constellation of actors and actresses who work with us, a rigorous and kind management, the audience we reunite and an always playing spirit that keeps us back in the theater.
The space we have created, the Teatre La Biblioteca, is the first step of what we intend to offer and is where everything surrounding our way of understanding performing arts comes from. From here we seek to relate to free spectators open to be transformed.
- Contemporary dialogue
"We must preserve the spaces of creation, the luxurious spaces of thought, the spaces where we invent what does not yet exist, the spaces of questioning about the past, and of wondering. They are our most precious property, our houses, those of each and every one of us. The impressive buildings of definitive certainty are therefore no longer to be built. We must keep at the centre of our world the space for our uncertainties, the space for our fragility, for our difficulties in speaking or listening.
We must not be amnesiac. Art spaces can get us away from fear and when you have less fear, you're less evil."
Jean-Luc LagarceFrom our theater space, we often ask ourselves about innovation and the value of the cultural tradition we've inherited. What does it mean today to live in a community, to have an identity, and which innovations are truly significant? Theater is like a bridge that stirs the past, the present, and the future. Therefore, the only time that is truly its own is the here-and-now, where the cultural legacies we've received and the future expectations we build converge and speak. In fact, theater as a social phenomenon is the enactment of this dialogue.
This is why we need more fiction: to innovate artistically means to be continually rethinking our perspectives and looking for ways of reuniting each one's pont of view, both in the forms and the content. In La Perla 29 we mix repertoire and current theatre; classical words containing modern forms, future voices where resonate echoes of the past. Always looking for the open spectator and reinventing the now-and-here of the theater. We firmly believe that the dilemma on modern or classical theatre has come to an end.
Labelling in this way -classic or modern- responds to the logic of acceleration, the fear of looking back or the pursue of apparent but ultimately conservative innovations. In theater, we travel from time to time through feelings and emotions. Beyond a modern or classical theatre, we seek to establish a contemporary dialogue between the audience and the stage.
What fascinates us most of theatre is the constant threshold between reality and fiction. The fact that the scene is never totally finished, and in any case it is always the viewer who completes it. This is like a training for life, because it takes a lot of imagination to define what is real in the midst of our current confusing reality. We must keep the space for our uncertainties at the centre of our world. To paste the fragments of the ruins of Time, to cradle them, to care for us; today this is a singular stake that we believe necessary. It starts with a way of working and understanding the craft, it is a stake that begins with the delight of living, with the need to reimagine ourselves in order to make this world a more dignified, freer and more hopeful place. In short, we need to feel more alive and more real.
- Art production quality
La Perla 29 is an independent structure with the will of a public theatre, which seeks its meaning within our society by providing an area of creation and free and imaginative dialogue.
We have created a sustainable production system which facilitates the artistic creation. We understant each show as an inseparable mix of art and production; one grows with the other. La Perla 29 is, above all, a way of doing: rigour in management, careful and attentive production, festive reception, insatiable curiosity and an infinite love for the scene.
The activity of La Perla 29 is focused on its own productions, both inside and outside the Teatre La Biblioteca. In addition, it participates in coproductions that are exhibited in the same theater or in other spaces. Finally, it assumes executive productions of other shows around the territory. We apply our model of theatre management in projects of all kinds, and this has consolidated our own aesthetics widely celebrated by the professional sector, the public and the critics.
- Freedom of the theatrical space
"A theatre will always be a battle between reality and fiction. Theatre itself is subject to the tensions of this struggle, this physical and emotional dialectics. A theatre space is not only a structured architectural setting easily definable in meters, surfaces, heights and capacities. It is also, and above all, a space of dreams, indefinite, lost in time."
Fabià PuigserverCulture must live in all kinds of spaces, it must flourish in the city, it must enter into dialogue with different architectures and it must be a constant challenge for spectators. Theatre should not be allowed to inhabit only conventional spaces, places that are easily explained by themselves. Conainers understood from the begging by the general public. Ruled spaces. The theater space is short-lived, changing in use and perhaps in format. This forces us to imagine more, to find different solutions that motivate creation processes and incite debate thanks to the impact it leaves on citizens. Imagining makes you look for new things that need to be debated and it builds on arguments to convince politicians, owners, the civil society... and it's not always easy because the results aren't so clearly assignable, they're not tangible a priori, and perhaps because of that it sometimes feels like you don't have a measurable return.
In La Perla 29 we have pursued this since the beginning. Space is important to us in two respects: The disposition bewteen grades and stage is decisive in each production and we redesign it for each occasion; and also everything that surrounds the scenic space. From the walls to all the rooms that the spectator walks in are important for building our theatrical project. Many of the company's resources go to these logics.
In this sense, inhabiting the Teatre La Biblioteca is a source of possibilities that have characterised our stage proposals and the theatrical experiences we generate. The Gothic nave of the old Hospital de la Santa Creu has been transformed according to the fictional spaces of each show. We're always in dialogue with this space, and we make sure the public is part of this relationship of affection and care, surprise and emancipated imagination.
- Build collective imaginaries
"Here's my job.
I have a task, from now on, for you.
To insist, brutally, from now on, on joy."
Vicent Andrés EstellésTheatre is a game that always gives more game, that does not run out, it is reinvented to return – certainly by surprise – to the starting point.
How to embrace love? How can we live knowing that we have to die? And fear? What does it mean to be happy? What if it's all a fiction? The fiction of saying. So how can we do real things? Perhaps precisely through fiction?
Culture seeks to give answers to these questions and, in so doing, it generates constantly-evolving collective imaginaries. And right here, artistic creation brings metaphors that agitate what is getting frozen, images that make us go further. We believe that our contribution as a theatre and cultural meeting point must be to bring a poetic layer to what is happening collectively. It helps us take perspective and critical sense, thrive, identify, question, remember, embrace and live within culture with as many voices as characters inhabit the scene. And rigour in management makes this a reality. We work with our feet touching the ground and our head always on the stars.
in this sense, a commitment to language is essential: home and precipice of shared imaginaries. Language, rather than a border or the robust fortification of an identity, is like a landscape, with its corners, its traces, the ploughed fields, the margins, the unexplored places... There are many ways of living in the same landscape, and we like to portray and understand them. This is how we appreciate language as a diverse, shared and free playing field. Moreover, we often mix more languages in one show, in order to create new fictional landscapes, more layers of juxtaposed imagination that take us to the heart of each story and, thus, broaden the boundaries of our collective imaginaries.
- The public as a cultural matrix
Theatre is one of the meeting places that the city counts with; it is a place where the city it can be defined more broadly, since people gather there want to imagine it differently. In this sense, the spectator is an active citizen who will expand the content and new forms experienced in the theatre to other places. It is like a slow and often imperceptible digestion, the effects of which are unpredictable. Our audience comes from different parts of the world and comes from very diverse imaginaries. And appeal them through the feeling, the word, the rhythm, and all the theatrical tools we in our hands.
Around La Perla 29 many initiatives have been born that expand the project and make the company an ecosystem of both artists and spectators. This is the case of the Friends of La Perla 29, #AsSocPerla, which emerged in 2013 as an autonomous initiative that brings together audience from all around Catalonia. With a large number of associated members and followers, #AsSocPerla brings inestimable value and expands the cultural offer of La Perla 29, proposing conferences, workshops, visits, reflection and debate spaces, among many other initiatives. Over the years, this association has become a cultural matrix where one can be more widely trained as a spectator, staking for critical spirit and being part of La Perla 29 impulse and way of doing.
The direction of La Perla 29 marks the company's line of art, directing and choosing shows, defining the programming of the seasons, as well as determining the creative processes and all the experience of the viewer since entering the theater.
Oriol Broggi, founder and artistic director of La Perla 29, is committed to a repertory theatre that sees the great classics, a close and crafted theatre, where word and tradition dialogue with the present. Always seeking to give a poetic look at reality, as a direct way to share it, rethink it, feel it and perhaps learn to love us a little better. It is a direction that takes care of the aesthetics and details in all facets of La Perla 29's theatrical life with attention and generosity.
He holds a degree in Dramaturgy and Stage Direction from the Institut del Teatre and has also studied Imatge i So, among others. In 2002, he founded La Perla 29, a theatre and production company, of which he is the artistic director, and with its headquarters at Teatre La Biblioteca since 2006.
He was the director of the Centre Dramàtic de Terrassa from 2003 to 2005 and the director of the Centre d'Arts Escèniques de Terrassa until December 2006. He has received several Butaca Awards for shows such as L'orfe del Clan dels Zhao, Incendis, Hamlet, and Antígona, among others.
Oriol Broggi advocates for a repertory of the great classics, a theatre that is intimate and artisanal, where words and tradition engage with the present: a theatre of actors, a theatre of ideas and substance.
Recently, he has been seen directing productions such as Coralina, la serventa amorosa by Carlo Goldoni. In October 2022, he premiered Orgull by Dostoevsky, and in March 2022, 28 i mig at Thêatre National de la Colline in Paris, followed by the Grec Festival in Barcelona.
We have also seen him direct Hamlet Aribau by William Shakespeare at Cinema Aribau in Barcelona, La Guerra no té rostre de dona by Svetlana Alexievich, Assedegats by Wajdi Mouawad, Filumena Marturano by Eduardo de Filippo at Teatre La Biblioteca in Barcelona. In 2019, he premiered La bona persona de Sezuan at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. In 2018, he presented Èdip at the Teatre Romea, the opening show of Grec 2018, El Poema de Guilgamesh, rei d'Uruk, and the opera La Flauta màgica at the Castell de Peralada Festival.
Other notable productions he has directed include Bodas de Sangre (Federico García Lorca, 2017), Boscos (by Wajdi Mouawad, 2017), Un obús al cor (by Wajdi Mouawad, 2016), Els cors purs (based on the story by Joseph Kessel, 2016), Al nostre gust (creation, 2015), Una giornata particolare (by Ettore Scola, 2015), Cels (by Wajdi Mouawad, 2014), 28 i mig (creation, 2012), Cyrano de Bergerac (by Edmond Rostand, 2012), and Incendis (by Wajdi Mouawad, 2012 and 2015). In 2012, he received the Ciutat de Barcelona Award for Natale in Casa Cupiello and Luces de Bohemia, as well as for his management of the Nau de Llevant of the Biblioteca de Catalunya.
With La Perla 29, he has built a solid team and a unique cultural space associated with Teatre La Biblioteca, becoming a meeting point within the Catalan theater system and establishing the company as one of the most stable in the country.
Perla 29 has developed a model of theatrical management based on process rigour, proximity to communication, innovation in management tools and, above all, involvement with artistic creation. This very own model has defined us and done so, because it has provided a meeting point between professionals from different cultural sectors and has consolidated a stable structure, capable of taking on major theatrical challenges with strong public projection.
Bet Orfila leads the general management and coordination of La Perla 29, together with Juli Macarulla, constantly seeking a balance between the challenge of the artistic engine and the viability of the project as a whole. It is a management model that enables us to work with a long-term vision, which is essential for the development of a solid artistic structure with constant activity.
Bet Orfila has worked in theater structures such as the Dramatic Centre of the Generalitat de Catalunya - Teatre Romea, the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and also as a freelance, coordinated several theatrical productions. In 2002 he founded La Perla 29 and the theatre management Pas 29, together with Juli Macarulla, Jordi Basomba and Xavier González, with art direction from Oriol Broggi and Carlota Subirós. The solidity and recognition of the management model that she leads, led Bet Orfila to participate in public processes of relevance, such as being president of ADETCA from 2016 to 2019, and to be part of several selection committees and important work tables for the performing arts sector, which denotes the public welcome of La Perla 29 as a motor of theatrical creation.
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