The company ATRESBANDES

Mònica Almirall Batet, Miquel Segovia Garrell and Albert Pérez Hidalgo form the company ATRESBANDES. Although it is difficult to catalogue their work, all that they do shares a common trait: to advocate for an experimental type of theatre where the investigation process is fundamental. Since 2011, they have travelled an eclectic trajectory with shows in different formats with different themes. Their first works (Solfatara, Locus Amoenus and All in) form a kind of trilogy about the individual and the different forms the individual finds to express (or not) his or her interior. These three plays have been shown at different theatres and festivals in Europe, such as the Teatre Rond Point in Paris, the Piccolo in Milan or the BE Festival in Birmingham, where Solfatara won the audience prize and the prize for the best play.

From 2017 ATRESBANDES began a new phase that would be marked by its collaboration with other living arts groups. L’últim sopar is a collaboration with the Belgian-English company Reckless Sleepers (FIOT Festival in Carballo and Sala Hiroshima, 2018). Coda is a stage collage that revolves around the life and works of Dmitri Shostakovich with the music of the Quartet Brossa (Teatre Grec, 2019). Última Thule is a dance piece created for HOTEL – Col·lectiu Escènic (Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, 2019). And finally, It Don’t Worry Me, in complicity with the duo formed by Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas, was premiered at the Teatre Lliure in January 2020.

In parallel with its creation work, the company also teaches performing arts workshops in which is shares the tools for creation that it uses in its work. The workshops are always linked to the creative moment of the company and have the aim of opening up the rehearsals room to share ways of doing things in front of the abyss that is the empty space.

Another activity parallel to the creation of performing arts pieces has been the curatorship of the project CROQUIS in Barcelona. From 2014 to 2017 the company promoted, together with the Sala Beckett and the Centre Cívic Can Felipa, an exhibition of works for the stage in the phase of creation. The aim of the project was to provide a space for artistes of live performing arts who wanted to share sketches, ideas or experiments in creative work with an audience that, anonymously and in writing, could express its thoughts with respect to what it had just seen. The project was awarded the Injuve prize in the year 2014.