Catalan Scenography, Institut del Teatre and Prague Quadrennial

Modern Catalan scenography and the Institut del Teatre share the same history. The majority of our stage designers from the 20th century and the modern day have passed through these premises, being educated and teaching. In fact, the founder of the Institut del Teatre was Adrià Gual: a dramatist, stage manager and above all, a symbolist stage designer. Gual developed new ways of using stage space, stylized the pictorial elements and drastically reduced iconic forms to attain an extraordinary level of purity.

We can find the founder of Catalan scenography if we go back to the first half of the 19th century – Francesc Soler i Rovirosa, who worked in various European theatres. He was part of the romantic aesthetic that defined the bourgeois taste of the time and led the appearance of various theatres in Barcelona around 1830. At that time, professionals and the latest techniques and aesthetics were imported from Paris – the French school contributed line rigour and other pictorial resources such as the panoramic view of the spaces.

The Barcelona scenographic school appear decades later in a naturalist style that lasted until the middle of the 20th century. The main exponent of this style was Josep Mestres Cabanes, whose most notable contribution was the so called ‘master angle’ in his system of visual representation based on the science of perspective.

The 1960s and 70s saw the rise of new poetries of stage space, as well as collaborations with avant-guard artists: projects with painters like Antoni Clavé, Modest Cuixart, Antoni Tàpies or Joan Miró on various shows mark a period of experimentation on the Catalan stage.

However, the greatest name of this period is Fabià Puigserver, an internationally-renowned stage designer closely linked to teaching at Barcelona’s Institut del Teatre. Puigserver had studied Fine Art and Scenography in Poland, and his contribution was key for the renovation of scenography in Spain. In his vision of the discipline, there was no more separation between static elements and action. Using an eclectic neo-expressionism, Puigserver was a true scenographer/dramatist for whom the expressive value of a space was greater than its representative value.

Together with him, the extensive professional and pedagogical work of Iago Pericor – very closely linked to the neo-avant-guard – was a true generational renewal for the Institut del Teatre, which saw the education of several stage designers sensitized to new techniques and aesthetics: Ramon Ivars, Joan-Josep Guillen, Isidre Prunés, Montse Amenós and Andreu Rabal; all have gone on to have intense professional careers but have also taught at the Institut. The value of volume and the impact of light would soon come to be considered the defining elements of stage space as well as the use of symbolic registers and consensual freedom in relation to technical structures.

During the 1990s a series of young stage designers appeared in Catalonia, and I shall draw out three of them: Alfons Flores, Quim Roy and Jon Berrondo, the last two who were teachers at the Institut del Teatre.

Before I tell you about our close relationship with the Prague Quadrennial, beginning in 1987, I would like to explain what the Institut del Teatre is. It is a centre for higher education, research and dissemination of the performing arts and has agreements and standing relationships with equivalent centres the world over. The Institut del Teatre currently comprises eight main elements: School of Drama, Dance Academy, Secondary School for the Arts and Dance Academy, School of Performing Arts Technology, Documentation Centre and Museum of the Theatrical Arts (MAE), Research Council, Regional centres in Terrassa and Vic and IT Dansa, postgraduate company.

Over the course of these hundred years the Institut del Teatre has experienced a huge range of situations, always relating to the difficulties faced by Catalonia during its history (the Second Republic, the Civil War, Franco’s dictatorship and the democratic period). In one way or another, the Institut has been continuously involved in the performing arts in Catalonia, training actors, dancers and stage designers, and later directors and playwrights. Recent directors of the Institut have always been careful to preserve the Institut’s unique model and to make it one of the pillars of theatre life in Catalonia.

From the outset, it has also built up its archive of documents and museum exhibits, along with what is today the second-largest performing arts library in Europe: some four hundred thousand titles and almost one million documents, all on the performing arts. It comprises a variety of manuscripts, books and documents (physical and digital) relating to Catalan theatre, Golden Age Spanish theatre and up-to-date academic writings.

We have document resources (with over 200,000 entries and various databases), the most important of which are the photographic archive and the programme collection. We also have a significant museum collection, in particular covering set designs, costume designs and costumes.

In fact, the Institut del Teatre has played a leading role in a model in which several disciplines of the performing arts coexist, and to which the theoretical and the practical both contribute. This is the model employed all over the world by the best centres to train creative talent in the performing arts. There are several reasons why the Institut del Teatre has a high profile internationally, some of the most important of which are that it held the first International Theatre Conference in 1929 and the International Theatre Conference in 1985, and recently the IFTR (International Federation in Theatre Research) Conference in 2013 during our Centenary Celebration.

Within this international projection, the Prague Quadrennial has a leading role: participation in the most important international exhibition on Scenography and Theatre Architecture in the world. It is a unique experience for our teachers and students; it is a four-yearly date that allows us to cultivate relationships, gain experience, knowledge and an opportunity to test oneself.

The 2015 Quadrennial will be our eighth participation, representing Catalonia through the Institut del Teatre, part of the Diputación de Barcelona (the city’s regional government) and the Generalitat (the autonomous government of Catalonia). From our first appearance in 1987 as ambassadors for Spain at the first edition of this international event and subsequent appearances in 2007 and 2011 with the help of the Ministry of Culture, the Institut del Teatre has chosen the successive national commissioners: Josep Montanyès, Isidre Bravo, Guillem-Jordi Graells and Ramon Ivars. All have worked to create a distinctive vision of stage space and theatre architecture.

The Curator of the present edition is Bibiana Puigdefàbrega, a renowned professional stage designer who has worked on various productions for the stage director Àlex Rigola and is currently working for the Scenography programme at the Institut. Our Curator this time is accompanied by an excellent team of teachers and collaborators of the Institut del Teatre: Montse Amenós, Ignasi Cristià, Jordi Fondevila and Marc Chornet. They work from a proposal initially devised by Ramon Ivars, the curator of the previous edition, a renowned teacher and designer now retired.

But returning to our history for a moment, our seven appearances at Prague commissioned by the Institut del Teatre have won various prizes, mentions and articles of recognition. In 1991 the Produccions Calidoscopi designed National Scenography Stand won a Special Mention. In 1995, the Gold Medal for Wardrobe was given ex aequo to La Fura dels Baus and Els Comediants, celebrating their respective Olympic contributions: Mediterrani, mar olímpic (Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony) and La festa del foc (Closing Ceremony).

The 1999 edition was magical for us: we won the top prize, the coveted Gold Medal, once again for La Fura dels Baus, this time in collaboration with renowned sculptor Jaume Plensa. This was a moment that marked a before and after thanks to the innovative staging, conceptually, dramatically and technologically speaking. The Catalan theatre company and Jaume Plensa were awarded prizes for three operatic productions; Manuel de Falla’s L’Atlàntida, Debussy’s The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust.

The work of La Fura’s Àlex Ollé and Carles Padrissa began in 1996 with L’Atlàntida, a stage oratory about the mythical content swallowed by the waters which also functioned as a symbol of Republican Spain shipwrecked in the Spanish Civil War. It was also the first of many fruitful collaborations with Jaume Plensa, establishing some specific stylistic features: a single stage in constant mutation, colourful symbolism and even the inclusion of a historical space within the dramaturgy. On this occasion the place chosen was Granada Cathedral. Later it was the immense Felsenreitschule at the Salzburg Festival which held the première of The Damnation of Faust in 1999.

At the same edition, we also earned a Special Mention for the work of scenographer Jon Berrondo for his production of Federico García Lorca’s Así que pasen cinco años (When Five Years Pass). Finally, the Silver Medal for Wardrobe was given to Juanjo Guillén for his wonderful work on Ramon Llull’s El Llibre de les Bèsties (The Book of Animals) in the Els Comediants production. Both were professors of our institution.

At the 2003 Quadrennial, the international jury awarded a Silver Medal in Architecture to the refurbishment of the Palau de l’Agricultura, a pavilion dating from the 1929 Barcelona Universal Exhibition, as the new headquarters of the Teatre Lliure.

Other distinctions are worth noting for other projects such as the Theatres at Risk Observatory by the architect Antoni Ramon, awarded the Mention of Honour in Architecture at the 2007 Prague Quadrennial.

Conclusion: we have had 27 years of a shared path of commitment and mutual recognition between Barcelona’s Institut del Teatre and the Prague Quadrennial. And it will go on…

Mercè Saumell
Head of Cultural Services
Institut del Teatre
Barcelona