Joan Brossa Didn’t Make Me

Plastic cups, teaspoons, typewriters, measuring tapes, bottle tops, combs and other everyday objects feature in a production in which the drama goes beyond the conventional space and limits of the stage. It is a mechanical opera, a large installation with no apparent narrative, object theatre with no actors or manipulators, just a pile of objects that move by themselves and create changing landscapes.

The public faces with this accumulation of objects forming a kind of walkable poem in which the voices have been stripped of their bodies. The starting point for the production is the little-known early prose of Joan Brossa and the sonority of his stage poetry from the 1940s, recited by people with functional diversity.

The Cabosanroque trilogy

Joan Brossa Didn’t Make Me premiered in 2016 and has since been seen by more than 25,000 people all over Europe. It forms part of the trilogy that Laia Torrents and Roger Aixut (Cabosanroque) devote to three key figures in Catalan literature. It is presented at this year’s Grec Festival, along with Demons (2020), a creation about the idea of possession based on texts by Verdaguer, and Flowers and Journeys (2023), which speaks of war and women by means of a reading of Mercè Rodoreda.

Artistic credits

Idea, creation, dramaturgy, direction, sound design, composition and stage design: Cabosanroque (Laia Torrents Carulla, Roger Aixut Sampietro) | Recorded voices: COIET Banyoles (specialized care service for adults with functional diversity in Pla de L’Estany): M. Àngels Verge Mata, Pau Fernández Pujol, Eduard Martí Vergé, Alex Alba, Jonathan Perasa, Carmelita Puigdemont and Jordi Saubí Gironès | Photographs: José Hevia

Coproduction: Cabosanroque, Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, Festival Temporada Alta 2016, Institució de la Lletres Catalanes, Fundació Brossa and Fundació Lluís Coromina
With the support of: Culture Department of the Generalitat de Catalunya Catalan government