Theatre CCCB, a new venue in Barcelona

Seventeen years after the inauguration of the Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture (CCCB), the venue is adding the finishing touches to its extension with the opening of the Teatre CCCB, a product of the revamped Antic Teatre de la Casa de la Caritat.

The new venue, which is connected to the current building by an underground corridor, has two multi-purpose rooms, the Sala Raval, on the first floor with seating capacity for 170 people, and the Sala Teatre, on the second floor, with room for 600 standing spectators and 450 seated spectators.

The rehabilitation work made the most of the remains of earlier buildings, the old theatre designed by Josep Goday in 1912, and the façade of a cloister in the old Casa de la Caritat. It is also equipped with escalators, one of the characteristic features of the CCCB’s main building.

It also has a new entrance, at Plaça Joan Coromines, where the new theatre, painted white, invites comparison with another white building, that of the MACBA.

The first activity it is to play host to will be the Kosmopolis literature fest, which starts on Thursday 24 March.

Theatre CCCB.

Theatre tickets are 50% discount off during La Mercè festivity

During La Mercè festivities, the city’s main theatres will be offering 50% discounts for shows on from 20 to 26 September. For that reason, we would like to recommend you hotel Barcelona Universal, located in Paral·lel avenue with the most emblematic theatres of our city.

Half price tickets can be bought until Saturday 25 September, at the Ticket Rambla, located at the Palau de la Virreina.

What’s more, tickets with special discounts during the La Mercè festival can also be bought online at the Telentrada and ServiCaixa websites.

Theatres taking part in this campaign include the Alexandra Teatre, the Almeria Teatre, the Antic Teatre, the Apolo, the Aquarel·la, the Arteria Paral·lel, the Sala Becket, the Borràs, the Brossa Espai Escènic, the Club Capitol, the Coliseum, the Condal, the Goya, the Guasch Teatre, the Cafè-Teatre Llantiol, the Teatre Lliure, the Sala Muntaner, the Nau Ivanow, the Poliorama, the Teatre del Raval, the Jove Teatre Regina, the Romea, the SAT, the Tarantana, the Teatreneu, the Versus and La Villarroel.

The Teatre Lliure will reopen in September

The Teatre Lliure in the Gràcia district will be reopening its doors on 30 September with “Cat on a hot tin roof” by Tenesse Williams.

The announcement was made by the director of the Lliure, Àlex Rigola, who will be directing the production and embarking on his final season in the post. The play is a co-production with the Centre Dramàtic Nacional and features Muntsa Alcàñiz.

Rigola has explained that the theatre will hold between 200 and 350 people according to the format, and that it will keep the “austere” style of seats without armrests that give the “feeling of sitting on a bench” and the sort of “closeness you would experience if you were in an Agora”.

The second production staged by the Lliure in Gràcia will be Harold Pinter’s “Celebration“, directed by Lluís Pasqual. Another play scheduled to be performed here is “Les dues dones que ballen” by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, with the season being closed by “Dos“, directed by Eduard Fernández.

The headquarters of the Lliure in Montjuïc, the Fabià Puigserver auditorium, will open the season with “Belmonte“, by Cesc Gelabert and music by Carles Santos. The musician will also be directing “Amarat“, a show on the world of circus.

The Barcelona Grec Festival 2010 dedicated to Japan

In its 34th edition, the 2010 Barcelona Grec Festival continues to opt for innovative, quality, newly created and varied shows. This year the Grec will be opting for the Japanese performing arts, with fifteen productions from Japan. The production, entitled Panorama Japó will enable audiences to enjoy a son et lumière show directed by Rioji Ikeda, in collaboration with the Sonar, and see Joan Ollé’s take on the non-modern theatre of Yukio Mishima.

Mention should also be made of “Ki“, an initiative from Cesc Gelabert and Frederic Amat (who is in charge of the programme for the 2010 Grec) to mark the centenary of Yamaga city’s Kabuki theatre, featuring a Japanese Butoh performer and a contemporary dancer.

Of the 65 shows making up the festival’s programme, it will fall to Prometeu to open the event, starring Carme Elias, though the amphitheatre will also be the setting for a mixture of music and poetry with Bolívar, fragmentos de un sueño, Chouf Ouchouf’s circus show and several dance and music performances.

As every year, the Grec, being held from 13 June to 1 August at 29 venues located throughout the city, seeks to find a balance between foreign and local offerings and among the various art forms: theatre, dance and music.

The national scene will be represented by Sergi Belbel, Julio Manrique, Oriol Broggi, Joan Manuel Serrat, Jordi Savall, T de Teatre and La Caldera.

The big international names attending the festival will include Corinne Bailey Rae, Bijan Sheibani, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Aydin Tejer and Omar Porras and William Ospina.

Otrascosas Gallery by Villarrosàs

The Otrascosas gallery, which belongs to the advertising agency Villarrosàs, offers Barcelona residents somewhere to enjoy all kinds of ideas. You must have passed by there loads of times: Via Laietana, 64. One of the floors of this building, Otrascosas, a gallery that accommodates every kind of artistic manifestation.

So far, during the two months and a bit it has been open to the public, Otrascosas has held concerts – like the one given by the Swedish band Billie The Vision & The Dancers – various screenings and an exhibition entitled Trochut + Apparatu Vol.1, which is on at the gallery until 16 December.

The aim, according to Marc Morro, who is in charge of Otrascosas, is to ‘run a weekly programme of talks, documentary screenings, concerts, theatre or whatever’. In other words, as he said himself: ‘That something happens every week.’

They happen and will happen because Otrascosas plans to revolutionise your Christmas festivities. From 17 December you will find an exhibition-market where you will be able to see and buy, at affordable prices, clothes produced by young designers.

At the same time, another part of the gallery will be dominated by a very special Christmas tree, made out of TV sets which will be showing different takes on Christmas.

The common feature of all of them is they have been recorded by all sorts of people using a digital camera which records with a texture similar to Super 8.

Via Laietana nº64, Principal – www.otrascosasdevillarrosas.com
Mondays to Fridays: 10.00-14.00h / 16.00-19.30h* *except openings