Just after the symbolic obstacle of the turn of the century (and millennium!) it really seemed as if Catalan dramatic literature had just entered – according to a well-known mantra attributed to Josep M. Benet i Jornet – “the best moment in its history.” Broadly speaking, it was not difficult to concur with such a bold statement: the new generations of playwrights (emerging since the nineties) began to venture beyond alternative venues and consider the possibility of professionalization; they were embraced by companies, theatres and directors; audience became accustomed to paying to see productions by playwrights from Catalonia; institutional projects designed to establish the careers of playwrights developed; drama teaching became official and diversified; everything seemed to indicate that the push for internationalisation launched a few years earlier was well founded...

But, between 2008 and 2010, the progressive expansion and recognition of the economic crisis caught the world of the performing arts with honey on its lips. The future expected suddenly became blurred, the opportunities diminished, and the mirage faded faster than we would have liked. In Catalonia in particular, the 2010 constitutional court ruling on its statute of autonomy also heralded a period of uncertainty and restrictions – the process of Catalan independence –, which added fuel to the fire. To make matters worse, the Covid-19 global pandemic has aggravated a situation that has been damaging the sector for quite some time.

Ten years have passed... Ten long years of crisis.

Questions pile up: What has become of that turn-of-the-century impetus and euphoria? What has happened to the playwrights and their projects, their expectations, their proposals for internationalisation, and their personal and group projects in the medium or long term? Where are the institutional initiatives that supported them? Are large and medium-sized companies still committed? Is a new type of theatre company emerging? And have theatre publications got over the shock? How has the crisis affected the themes, models, formalisations and writing and staging references? Have the modes of production changed?

The symposium “Interpreting the Present, Imagining the Future. Catalan Dramatic Literature in Times of Crisis. 2008-2021” seeks to discuss all these questions, and will do so considering four lines of debate:

The economic difficulties have weakened the interest of many countries in new writing from abroad, a phenomenon highly characteristic of the previous decades that had greatly benefitted Catalan drama. The focus has shifted to local production. Partly because of this – and with notable exceptions – there are fewer and fewer exchanges, fewer residencies, fewer festivals focused on playwriting, fewer translations, and fewer premieres of our playwrights abroad.

Moreover, as a result of the economic downturn the prevailing production mechanisms have changed or disappeared, or new ones have been created. Political powers have modified their support and subsidy systems: several public projects have collapsed and some funding opportunities faded away. New creative dynamics have also emerged (or expanded): a significant number of playwrights have become directors; small companies have been founded that, combining interests and efforts and agreeing to work under precarious conditions to remain active, are often organised around the figure of the playwright; plays have limited the number of characters and the complexity of productions; micro-theatre experiences have been created; proposals for online writing, radio formats and audiovisual theatre experiences have been invented, and a long list of others.

Since the start of the crisis, the perplexity and uncertainty of contemporary individuals –including playwrights, of course– has continued to rise. Now more than ever, everything seems relative, provisional and ephemeral. In tempestuous times, globalisation feeds on the scraps left by the storm, and thus the deterritorialisation of cultures expands and uproots artistic expressions. Will the awareness of a collective project of dramatic literature survive these years? A national project? Is there a feeling of shared belonging? How are heritage and tradition treasured and valued? Has Catalan self-deprecation, so exposed in the preceding years, persisted (or increased)? Are there traces of tradition in the new plays, in the new playwrights? How is the loss of a major local playwright like Josep M. Benet i Jornet experienced? How is the language used and valued? How do the dramaturgies of the different Catalan-speaking territories relate to each other? Are languages other than Catalan more frequent on our stages? What part does the growing multiculturalism of recent years play in all this?

In the vertigo of all these questions, we realise that collective memory is becoming increasingly fragile: it wanes or easily hides, and when it shows its face, it almost always does so by halves (partially or selectively) or shifting non-stop (reforming itself over and over again). So the past, the legacy, does not seem reliable. It does not seem to be the best place to look for shelter.

For the past ten years, the desperate knock of refugees on our doors – the “vagabonds,” Bauman would say – has become the most obvious symptom of a sense of global catastrophe (which also has to do with wars, terrorism, pandemics and climate change). All this has destabilised political structures, both local and global – the old project of Europe and the role (and power) of rulers –, but, among other things, it has also challenged the prevailing aesthetic customs. Faced with global calamity and uncertainty, there are those who demand the cultivation of liberating entertainment; at the opposite end, there are sectors that, during lean times, forbid any attempt at frivolity. In short, the contents explored in the plays, and the manner (forms) of writing and staging have to be re-imagined.

For many, following an impetus that began a few years ago, the famous postmodern simulacrum – even renouncing fiction – must be denounced to demand the emergence of authenticity in stage productions. These are the years of testimony, of literature of the self, when the roles of writer, character and performer are no longer differentiated. These experiences are often led by women, who embrace and amplify the eruption of the Me Too movement and the expansion of new feminism.

But for others, in contrast, we need to denounce the hypocrisy of spectacularization and the lie of the real when this real enters the stage: a new fiction is needed – halfway between the document and the fable – as sovereign of our dreams.

In this vein, it is clear that the paths adopted by writing over the last few years (minimalism, existentialist exploration, the “poética de la sustracción”, dream play or narrative drive, among others) have been reconceived again and again. Questioned, rather than banished, thoroughly reviewed and used in an unprecedented manner. Playwrights such as Pinter, Churchill, Beckett, Lagarce, Fosse, Berhard, Mamet and McDonagh, among many possible examples, are losing momentum. The gradual normalisation of the narrative mode on stage encourages adaptations of non-dramatic texts, but avoiding the old need for dramatisation...

The forms of creation are diversified beyond solitary individual writing (forms of collective gestation are being recovered, the écriture de plateau – under construction, during rehearsals – is spreading, the use of new technologies applied to creation is expanding...) while the themes change (from the old postmodern self-absorption to contents strictly inspired by current events, be they global or local). Similarly, writing styles, which in previous years had already assumed the polyhedral multiplicity of rhapsody, are multiplying and spreading. And this to the point that, in certain productions, it is difficult to distinguish whether the textual score (the axis or textual matrix in a production that aims to transfer a play to the stage), which lends meaning to the concept of dramatic literature, maintains its axial function or becomes just a grouping of materials for a spectacular, let us say, post-dramatic conception.

Barcelona, February 2021