Tanya Beyeler and Pablo Gisbert | El Conde de Torrefiel in conversation with Lucrezia Ercolani and Lorenza Accardo
introduced by Piersandra Di Matteo
El Conde de Torrefiel’s theatre has distinguished itself in recent years by creating stage mechanisms that intertwine visual power, acoustic exploration, narrative trajectories, and philosophical inquiries. For this Barcelona-based collective, the stage serves as a space-time capable of provoking diverse experiential protocols, assembling prepared absences and unexpected appearances, and embedding itself within the interstices of urban life.
By prompting the chiasmus between the visual and auditory, their creations interrogate the surface of the theatrical image through combinatory dynamics. This approach aims to reveal the violence of contemporary living. Excesses, metamorphoses, and phantasmatic elements evoke the porous thresholds between the perceived and the desired, constructing worlds where the human, technology, and non-human reveal themselves as cooperating agents. It is within these realms that imagination takes shape.
Immaginazione e a altri umidi fantasmi is part of
PRISMA — Twilight Zones
El Conde de Torrefiel in the city of Rome
El Conde de Torrefiel is a project led by Tanya Beyeler and Pablo Gisbert, founded in 2010 and based in Barcelona. Their research has given life to an aesthetic that merges theatre, writing by bodies, literature, sound research and plastic arts in its exploration of the ambiguities of contemporary life. Among their main works, GUERRILLA (2016), LA PLAZA (2018), Una imagen interior (2022), La luz de un lago (2024). Their shows and installations toured theatres and festivals in America, Asia and above all Europe: the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, the Viennaer Festwochen in Vienna, the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Festival GREC in Barcelona, Short Theatre in Rome, the MMCA in Seoul, the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico, the Transámerique Festival in Montréal and the Festival d’Avignon, among others.
Tanya Beyeler (Lugano, 1980) moved from Switzerland to Spain when she was 20 to study Dramaturgy and Human Sciences in Barcelona – she graduated in Drama in 2005. She began to work in the field of textual theatre but time and experience brought her close to dance and performance.
Pablo Gisbert (Ontinyent, 1982) studied Philosophy at Valencia University and Dramaturgy in Madrid. He graduated in Dramaturgy from the Institut del Teatre of Barcelona in 2011. In the same year he was awarded with the National Accesit prize Marqués de Bradomín for his text A cinema burns and ten people are burned. In 2013 he was selected for the European dramaturgy platform Fabulamundi: playwriting Europe.
presented at Short Theatre 2024 within the project Eco:frequenze funded by Next Generation EU
ph. Mario Zamora
