La Fura dels Baus: Scenes for the twenty-first century

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Notes

1. The company's origins are referenced in the production Naumón (2004). Naumón is also the name given to a boat which is used as a piece of itinerant scenery by the company; it is a nomadic performance space and tours with the assistance of a full professional sailing team. When on tour, the Naumón offers several shows simultaneously. On deck, a donkey walks around the boat both symbolizing the company's origins and Catalonia's tradition of labouring on which the economy was built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is also the group's mascot and an image of the long journey carried out by La Fura dels Baus since their formation in 1979.

2. Miquel Badosa ‘Miki Espuma’ (b. Barcelona, 1959), a musician and singer/songwriter, emerged from the so-called Catalan rock movement towards the end of the 1970s. Espuma habitually takes primary responsibility for the group's musical work.

Pep Gatell (b. Barcelona, 1959) comes from street theatre and the musical scene (he plays the saxophone). He joined the company in 1981.

Jürgen Müller (b. Weiterdingen, East Germany, 1955) trained extensively in physical theatre. Müller studied with Dimitri in Switzerland, with Philippe Gaulier in France and undertook training in Mime and Pantomime at Barcelona's Institut del Teatre. He takes responsibility for the company's physical work.

[Agrave]lex Ollé (b. Barcelona, 1960) studied Puppetry and Object Theatre at Barcelona's Institut del Teatre. He was part of several Catalan theatrical collectives before joining La Fura dels Baus in 1981. Together with Padrissa, he has, since 1992, specialized in the company's large-scale work and operatic productions.

Carlos Padrissa (b. Moià, 1958) studied saxophone, piano and harmony at the Conservatorio del Liceo in Barcelona.

Pere Tantiñà (b. Moià, 1960) studied trombone and graphic design.

3. Marcel.lí Antúnez (b. Moià, 1959) studied Fine Arts and Music (specializing in the trumpet); he left La Fura dels Baus in 1990. He became a member of the performance collective Los Rinos and then developed a solo career as an installation artist. His installations include La vida sin amor no tiene sentido (Life Without Love Has No Meaning, 1993) and Joan, l'home de carn (Joan, Flesh and Blood, 1992), centring on a hi-tech robot covered in pigskin. In 1994, he started a career as a technological performer with Epizoo, where the audience participated in manipulating various parts of his body through computerized terminals: opening his nasal orifices; smacking his buttocks; hardening his nipples; opening his lips, etc. In Afàsia (1997), Antúnez reconstructed Homer's Odyssean universe as a technological buffoon: through an exoskeleton he controlled the sound on stage and also the virtual images – animated holography and videos performed by several actors. The use of technology at the service of narrative was further developed in productions such as Pol (2002), Mondo Antúnez (2004) and Transpèrmia (2006). Antúnez's work is judged to have points of contact with that of Stelarc whose work is far better known in the English-speaking world. On Antúnez, see Paul Julian Smith, ‘Marcel.li Antúnez Roca: Biology, Technology, Visuality’, in Antes y despues del Quijote: en el cincuentenario de la Asociación de Hispanistas de Gran Bretana e Irlanda (Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana/Biblioteca Valenciana, 2005), pp. 393–397; Steve Dixon, ‘Metal Performance: Humanizing Robots, Returning to Nature, and Camping About’, TDR: The Drama Review, 48:4 (T184) (Winter 2004), 15–46 (pp. 33–38).

Jordi Arús (b. Sabadell, 1960), a mechanic by profession, later trained in mime and pantomime. He left La Fura dels Baus in 1992 to direct the Pavilion of Discovery at Seville's Expo 92. He now works freelance as a technical director for large-scale international events.

‘Hansel’ Francisco Javier Cereza (b. Barcelona, 1962) was a medical student when he joined La Fura dels Baus in 1981. He left the company in 2004 to direct, together with scenographer Alfons Flores, the opening ceremony of Barcelona's Fórum 2004. He is currently part of the artistic team of Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas.

4. On this period of La Fura dels Baus, see La Fura dels Baus 3 Cuadernos Monográficos El Público, 34 (June 1988); [Agrave]lex Ollé (ed.), La Fura dels Baus, 1979–2004 (Barcelona: Editorial Electa, 2004); Mercè Saumell, ‘Performance Groups in Catalonia’, in David George and John London (eds), Contemporary Catalan Theatre: An Introduction, The Anglo-Catalan Society Occasional Publications, 9 (Sheffield: The Anglo-Catalan Society, 1996), pp. 103–128; Mercè Saumell, ‘Performance Groups in Contemporary Spanish Theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 7:4 (1998), 1–30.

5. José Antonio Sánchez, ‘La estética de la catástrofe’, in José Antonio Sánchez (ed.), Artes de la escena y de la acción en España: 1978–2002 (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, 2006), pp. 135–182 (p. 156).

6. Writing in Catalan, playwright [Agrave]ngel Guimerà (1845–1924) produced historical tragedies in verse and modern dramas in prose. His most significant work is Terra baixa (Martha of the Lowlands, 1896), considered the foundational text of Catalan drama. It is regularly restaged, most recently in 2002 at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (TNC).

7. Hermann Bonnín created a season entitled Teatre Obert where adventurous productions were programmed outside the Centre Dramàtic de la Generalitat's base, the Teatre Romea. In this way Accions (1983) was staged on a building site close to Barcelona's port. Early performances by La Cubana were also programmed in the city under this scheme.

8. La Fura label ‘literary matrix’ any production whose starting point is a literary text.

9. Some publicity events, like Pepsícole (1996), undertaken in Barcelona for the brand Pepsi, involved an enormous open air spectacle, near the cathedral, attracting an audience of more than 10,000.

10. The study by Miquel Moragas Spà and Nancy Rivenburgh, ‘Television and Olympic Ceremonies’, presented and published for the I Simposium Internacional de Ceremonias Olímpicas (Barcelona–Lausanne, 13–18 November 1995), reproduces the extensive list of television stations from across the globe that aired the entire opening ceremony for the Olympic Games in Barcelona. These included Channel 7 (Australia), TV Globo (Brazil), CRTV (Cameroon), CTV (Canada), TVA (Canada, French Language), Canal A (Colombia), Tele-R (Cuba), CCTV (China), ERTU2 (Egypt), TF1 (France), ARD (Germany), RAI1 (Italy), NHK (Japan), MBC (Korea), Canal 13 (México), OS 1 (Russia), SABC (South Africa), TV2 (Spain), Canal Olimpic (Catalonia), BBC (UK).

11. José Antonio Sánchez, ‘Génesis y contexto de la creación escénica contemporánea en España’, in Artes de la escena y de la acción en España: 1978–2002, pp. 15–33 (p. 25).

12. Living between Barcelona and Paris, Jaume Plensa (b. Barcelona, 1955) is well known for his large-scale works, for the use of industrial materials, like iron, and for a technological sophistication. He has exhibited in Salzburg, Brussels, Paris and London. Emblematic pieces include The Crown Fountain in Chicago's Millennium Park and The Sculpture of Light in the BBC building in central London. He has been collaborating regularly with La Fura dels Baus since the early 1990s.

13. The opera, written between 1930 and 1936, the year when the Spanish Civil War broke out, was plagued by disasters. Jacint Verdaguer (1845–1902), poet and priest as well as father of the contemporary Catalan language, was excommunicated whilst he was writing his epic poem L'Atlàntida. The composer Manuel de Falla (1876–1946) died in exile in Argentina without finishing the opera that was finally completed by his pupil Ernesto Halffter. The muralist Josep Maria Sert (1876–1945) saw his paintings at the Cathedral in Vic, his native town, destroyed in 1936.

14. Carlos Padrissa, ‘Creación operística de La Fura dels Baus', in Seminari d'escriptura dramàtica i dramatúrgia escènica I/II (Lleida: Edicions de la Universitat de Lleida, 2005), pp. 61–74 (p. 66).

15. The interview with [Agrave]lex Ollé was carried out on 30 December 2006.

16. José María Cortés, Orden y caos. Un estudio cultural sobre lo monstruoso en el arte (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1997), p. 69.

17. ‘Our collective imagination is from the phallus and its accessory values of money, domination, exclusion and systematic violence.’ Sadie Plant, Zeroes and Ones – Digital women + The New Technoculture (London: Fourth State, 1997), p. 33.

18. For Julia Kristeva the abject comes to define that which is found in the physiological frontiers of the body and which provokes repulsion or disgust. The iconography of the abject conforms to liquids and substances shed by the body: blood, urine, semen, sweat. It is a desolate vision of the human condition through its corporeal degradation. See Les Pouvoirs de l'horreur: un essai sur l'abjection (Paris: Seuil, 1980).

19. Don Idhe, Els cossos en la tecnologia (Barcelona: Editorial UOC, 2004), p. 49.

20. See Leandre Duch and Joan Carles Mèlich, Escenaris de la corporeïtat (Barcelona: Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, 2003), p. 96.

21. Carlos Padrissa and Mercè Saumell, ‘Teatro Digital’, in the D.Q. Don Quijote en Barcelona programme of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, 2000–2001 season, pp. 151–152.

22. Brenda Laurel, quoted in Benjamín Woolley, El universo virtual (Madrid: Acento Editorial, 1994), p. 221.