THEATER CREATION WORKSHOP: The masked ball
With Albert Tola and Rodrigo García Olza in collaboration with Dau al Sec
The Espai Philae Theatre Creation Workshop is pioneering in its original format, and its formula has inspired other initiatives currently taking place in Barcelona. However, this is the only workshop in the city that explores a chosen theme to delve into our inner landscape through writing and performance, culminating in a professional performance.
THEME FOR THE 2025-26 COURSE: The Masked Ball
Who are you when no one is watching? Who is a tiktoker when TikTok is banned? Who is that influencer when there are no social networks? Who is that businesswoman when there is no office? Who is the grandmother when there are no grandchildren? Who is the priest when there is no cassock? Who is the maid when there is no mistress? Who is the psychologist when there is no patient? Who is your doctor when he takes off his coat? Who is your neighbor when the door is closed? Who is your financial advisor when he leaves the bank? Who is that singer when he returns alone to the dressing room? Who are you when you look at yourself in the mirror for more than five minutes straight?
Perhaps theatre offers us the possibility of experiencing this inner search not as something tragic, but rather as an investigation full of suspense. The masquerade, the suspense genre, the detective piece—these may well become, during our workshop The Dance of Masks, a joyful way of reflecting on our identity. Works such as The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, Lulu by Frank Wedekind, or The Lover by Harold Pinter will accompany this journey into mystery, where nothing is what it seems.
Its coordinators, with over twenty years of experience in the theater and founders of the Nigredo Company, have been leading the Espai Philae creative workshop for six years, with Anna Sabaté as the stage coach. After several years of selling out, this workshop will be held for four performances at the Dau al Sec Theater at the end of the course.
Objectives
- Create from non-judgment to be able to apply judgment later.
- Work creatively as a team: learn to see, hear and listen from the here and now to integrate instructions while moving towards a common objective: the task.
- Unlock creativity and, therefore, inspiration, without tending to one’s own judgments that restrict one’s own expression.
- Receive criticism in a constructive way.
- Develop curiosity about the human being, that is, from the archetypes of the feminine and the masculine to the particular characteristics of each participant, passing through the entire intermediate spectrum.
- Develop ways of relating and looking at you.
- Access, through the collective imagination, recesses of the unconscious that speak and relate our human experience.
- Perform a staging: a final theatrical performance through the entire process of dramaturgical and interpretive experimentation based on one’s own internal voice.
Contents
- Conducted writing exercises, alternating with readings of other people’s and own texts.
- Acting improvisation.
- Body and movement work.
- Interpretation and acting training.
- Character creation.
- Creation of a unique structure from dramaturgy.
- Progression and rhythm in the theatrical show
- Exploration of the choir as a contemporary formal reflection of the global problems of our global society.
- Qualities of movement as a binder of one’s own universe.
Video
Schedule
Targeted
Especially aimed at graduates in Theater and Consciousness Sabaté® Method.
This workshop can also be accessed by theater students from other schools, actors/actresses, professional playwrights and other accomplices of the scene.
Date
From October 11 2025, to June 7 2026
Schedule
Saturdays, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Includes 1 intensive writing weekend + 2 intensive weekends before the premiere.
Extra sessions of memorization of the texts are contemplated outside of class hours. To determinate.
Discounts
20% discount to all post-graduates of the Institut del Teatre.
