In 2010, in the midst of a crisis, seven friends who had finished their studies at the Institut del Teatre decided to create their own company to do the theater they wanted. Twelve years later, La Calòrica is a successful brand (a lot of shit, it is said in theater slang) and is a benchmark for current theater.
Xavi Francés, Aitor Galisteo-Rocher, Esther López, Marc Rius, Israel Solà, Júlia Truyol and Joan Yago are those seven friends who are still together, combining company projects with personal ones.
This Christmas they are chaining two plays in two theaters in Barcelona. Ya se puede ver en el teatro Borràs su ultimo éxito, What do we talk about while we don't talk about all this shit. And from January 10, at the Poliorama, they will recover The Birds, the first work that has traveled abroad, specifically to Italy.
Like classic repertoire companies, La Calòrica alternates performances of the two works and, even more difficult, interprets them in Catalan or Spanish, depending on the place where they perform, “today in Molina de Segura and tomorrow in Castellterçol”.
Three of the seven, Xavi Francés, Marc Rius and Júlia Truyol, talk to La Vanguardia. Although Joan Yago is the playwright and Israel Solana the director, they do not have a leader nor is he lacking: "We are the most reunited company in history."
"This Christmas we are hoarding the market", says Truyol. "It has been an opportunity to close two cycles in Barcelona: the three seasons of What are we talking about... and also the three seasons of Els ocells", details Rius. "The fact that Els ocellos only represents it on Mondays and Tuesdays at the Poliorama, allows us to bowl on the weekends", adds Francés.
But the two works do not end here: "The Catalan market is covered, but now we have expanded to Spain and we believe that they will continue in Spanish," Truyol points out, despite the fact that "populism and neoliberal politics without values that are increasingly it is more shameless” means that Els ocells “is dying by itself, because the first referents, such as Trump and Rivera from Ciudadanos, are no longer there,” Francés details.
Regarding De què parlem..., Rius refers: “We had wanted to deal with the climate emergency for a long time and we did not know how to face it. In the end, it seemed to us that a good way would be to approach it from the denialist perspective. And the toilet full of shit that we found in the La Calòrica rehearsal room was a good metaphor, because the building could fall, but the neighbors talked about other problems”.
What is surprising is that his project remains so alive after twelve years: “It costs a lot,” Truyol replies. Loving each other and being together is wonderful, but it is daily work, although it also pays off. It is a seven-way marriage, which is difficult to maintain. On the other hand, it is a space of absolute artistic freedom, of demands about what we would like to do and of generating work”. “La Calòrica has become home”, Rius stresses.
They work as a team, proposing themes and working on the creative process, side by side with the director and the playwright, “who comes to all the rehearsals and changes whatever is necessary”. “One of Yago's complaints is that, since we are the same age, sometimes it is not easy to come up with some projects. For this reason, in De què parlem... we have explored with Mònica López, from another generation and another school”.
Regarding the future project, still in an embryonic state, they anticipate that it will start from the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when the European countries divided up the map of the continent after the defeat of Napoleon. And they also confess –pay attention, producers!– that they would like to explore the audiovisual world. "We are working". There is Calòrica for years.
Catalan version, here
