tants viatges possibles... ang

As I sit down to write about the Teatre Lliure's 2014/2015 season, I am filled with a sense of incredible gratitude. Gratitude for your heartfelt support last year, day in and day out, making 2013/2014 far and away our best attended season ever.  So I'd like to extend a warm thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to each and every person who heeded our call, left their homes, and headed to our theatres in Gràcia and Montjuïc last year.
Given the current state of things, I don't want – and don't need – to dwell on the terrible realities we see in the media every day, realities our fellow citizens are experiencing firsthand. The unthinkable depths of despair no news story could ever express. Sorrow and desolation are incredibly difficult to convey, and truly doing so is impossible. And unfortunately, we humans lack empathy. Maybe, with time, this will change…
That said, there are many kinds of realities. And though the movers and shakers, and their power-touting representatives, try to pretend there's only one reality, only one point of view – when they try to shame, blame and intimidate us – we the people come together in our communities and build new realities, staring challenges in the face with the strength that comes from unity. We build realities that elude them, dreams they can’t fight or root out, dreams that are the brainchild of imagination, of our need to soar beyond the run-of-the-mill and find poetry, laughter and tears to feed our souls. Most of all, the realities we build help us discover worlds quite unlike theirs, worlds that are ours – or can be, in the future.
This doesn't mean we flee toward a sterile kind of theatre where we ignore the realities that surround us. Rather, we follow the advice uttered by a great philosopher: we are pessimists because of our intelligence, yet optimists because of our will.
That's why the word journey best sums up our new season, a season awash with tales told through theatre, tales that only theatre can tell. Shakespearean journeys that again remind us what we humans are made of, yet in new and surprising ways – without beating around the bush, while calling a spade a spade.
Our passionate journey begins in Catalonia before voyaging to Naples, one of the pinnacles of European theatre. It then blends with the great theatre of Argentina before coming home again.
It encompasses the theatre of emigrants and exiles, of those fleeing hunger and death. In the talented hands of Margarida Xirgu and Antoni Cunill Cabanellas, it unites with a rich Neapolitan history. A tradition embodied by the work of the great Eduardo De Filippo, a master playwright and master teacher. A true craftsman, a man whose work is more alive by the day, brimming with modernity and emotion, speaking with and to the heart. In a grand theatre in Buenos Aires, or in its living rooms (what difference does it make?) – it coalesces as a live soirée packed with emotion, something we know with our very cores is ours, without knowing why. It is a journey along the twisting paths to the world of wealth (where will this lead? what bizarre world awaits?). And it is other journeys, long and short, through great classics and contemporary authors, through pieces still yet to be written, pieces just waiting to be born.
Every journey entails risks, even those we embark on with friends or loved ones. But every journey is also a source of joy.
This season offers up a host of options. So pick your own journeys. Forge your own path. And create your own realities.
Just before a show starts, as actors stand in the wings or take their places on the darkened stage, many of them grab each other's icy cold, sweaty hands, and whisper to one another the words I’d like to share with everyone who joins in our journey this 2014/2015 season: Enjoy the ride!