High Season does not stop growing and expanding. With more and more sub-venues, in seven municipalities, apart from the headquarters of Girona and Salt, the festival has once again become the great cultural event of the Girona autumn.
The figures are clear: 63,940 spectators in the 171 performances, which represents 90.6% capacity occupancy. Estación Alta has produced or co-produced 25 shows, which have been seen by 17,382 viewers, a third of the total.
The festival raised the curtain on September 30 with the last concert of Antònia Font's return tour, which delighted the audience, in a Palau Firal in Girona where not even a needle could fit. And until last Sunday, December 10, the offer has been multidisciplinary and, above all, overwhelming.
Among the star shows of this edition, it is worth highlighting Vudú (3318) Blixen, the piece by Angélica Liddell about which the festival director, Salvador Sunyer, states: "I think it is a show that will be talked about throughout the world when can be seen. And we are proud that it has premiered in Estación Alta".
The Complicité company's show, Drive your plow over the bones of the dead, based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, has been another of the great successes of this edition, "after chasing them for fifteen years," he says. Sunyer.
The fact that this production has been able to be brought opens the door to a more continued collaboration with the English company, "although it must be taken into account that bringing them is expensive and difficult," says the director of the festival, who also highlights other international shows , such as those of Milo Rau (Familie), Mariano Pensotti and Grupo Marea (The Work), Dominique Blanc (La douleur) and Jokūbas Brazys with OKT (Žuvėdra, La gavina).
The festival has presented 20 international shows, of which it has co-produced 3, from 10 countries, and which have been seen by 13,023 spectators. And in the professional field, 60 programmers from 10 countries have attended some of the festival's functions and have met with producers, directors and artists, with a view to exporting some of the proposals that have been presented at Estación Alta.
Among the initiatives that have grown the most in the last editions of Temporada Alta are the social and educational programs of the festival, which have benefited 7,523 people and 3,246 students from 52 centers, who have participated in the 98 activities organized by A Tempo, Arts and Training, promoted by the La Ciutat Invisible Foundation with the support of the Banc Sabadell Foundation.
In the audiovisual field, which is another of the proposals that increase year after year, it is worth highlighting the La caverna project, the audiovisual series in which great directors and creators of the scene talk with personalities from the world of culture. Since the first conversation was posted on July 6, the set of videos already has 17,103 views. And in 2024 six more will be recorded.
On the other hand, the proposal of Això no es un casting, in collaboration with Ràdio Primavera Sound, has become the most listened to performing arts podcast in Spain, with 19,722 playbacks.
Sunyer has highlighted FitzRoy, by Jordi Galceran, as the most popular show, and assures that Estación Alta will return to Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Lima.
Likewise, he reported that the media impact of the festival has been valued at 12 million euros, which represents an increase of 50% compared to the 8 million of the previous edition. "I ask that public festivals and theaters also give this detail of figures, so that we all know what is done with public money," claimed the festival director.
Although this time he did not write a letter to the Three Wise Men - "they always end up bringing me the opposite of what I asked for" - he did remember that the Peeping Tom Diptych show had to be presented in Figueres because in Girona and Salt there is no theater that can host such a production. It is said.
