Places must be reserved in advance until full capacity is reached. This event is aimed primarily at Dramático Professionals.
Teatro María Guerrero | Sala Grande
On the Monday before the event, detailed information and booking instructions will be sent by email to the members of Dramático Professionals. Requests will be accepted in strict order of arrival.
14 OCT 2024 at 12:00 If places are available, attendance will be opened up to the general public.
Theatre, a ritual to continue being human
Theatre is a place of resistance against the society of screens and loneliness, hyperinformation and isolation. It is a meeting place par excellence and one of our oldest conventions. It is even a form of therapy. How else would it provoke public catharsis? It is a democratic place par excellence for sharing emotions and stories we need to tell in order to remain afloat.
How to reach emotion with truth? Where must we situate ourselves so this moment touches us, makes us forget the outside world, abducts us and leads us to travel and dream?
At decisive moments in history, we have looked to philosophers and artists, all of them people who could speak to us of another truth, open our eyes to other worlds, and serve as guides when we found ourselves anguished, confused and powerless in the face of the suffering of the world.
So, in these times of change, how to speak from the stage? What to tell? What to programme? We have to be, and are, transmitters of values. We need to be capable of awakening curiosity, a critical spirit, and affection in a frivolous society where everything has to be here and now.
To go to the theatre is to take time for yourself, to observe, to feel, to vibrate, to cry, to laugh, to be indignant, to feel better… And to know that wisdom always leads to uncertainty, never to polarisation, to opinion…
With a degree in Art History from the University of Barcelona, she is the current artistic director of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (Barcelona). She was head of the Teatro Español (Madrid) from 2016 to 2019 and of the production company Factoria Escènica Internacional (FEI) between 2005 and 2016, member of the board of directors of the Academia de las Artes Escénicas from 2014 to 2020, and professor of Directing and Acting at the Institut del Teatre (Barcelona 2001-2016).
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Portaceli has directed and adapted numerous shows during her prolific career in the performing arts. Her more recent work include Terra baixa (Reconstrucció d’un crim) by Àngel Guimerà and version by Pablo, La Víctor C. by Anna Maria Ricart, both for the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (2023, 2021), The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende, adaptation by Anna Maria Ricart, Teatro Español de Madrid and Teatre Grec de Barcelona, (2021) or Bovary by Michael de Cock, based on Madame Bovary de G.Flaubert, Teatre KVS, Brussels (2021).
No passa cada dia que algú ens necessiti (de fet, no és gaire habitual que algú ens necessiti), adaptation by Albert Boronat, Carme Portaceli and Judith Pujol, Teatre Grec, Barcelona (2020), Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, adapted by Michael de Cock, Anna María Ricart and Carme Portaceli, Teatro Español, Madrid (2019) and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, with a version by Guillem Morales and Carme Portaceli, are just some of the directions and adaptations she has recently made.
She has also directed opera, L’enigma di Lea by Rafel Argullol and music by Benet Casablancas, Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona (2019), and the zarzuela Policías y ladrones with music by Tomás Marco and libretto by Álvaro del Amo Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid (2018).
Before this came Euripides’ The Trojan Women, by Alberto Conejero (2017), The Rose Tattoo, by Tennessee Williams, Centro Dramático Nacional (2016), and Només Són Dones by Carmen Domingo, Teatre Nacional de Catalunya 2015, among many others.
She has received numerous awards, including two MAX Awards for Best Show and Best Direction, for the work Només Són Dones, in addition to three ADE Awards, Best Direction in 2005 for the play Sopa de pollastre amb ordi, and for Best Direction and Scenography for the play Solness, el constructor in 2001. She has also received numerous Butaca Awards and Awards in Arts Escèniques de la Generalitat Valenciana.