In process: The Catalan independence movement in on-stage translation

Abstract

This article focuses on aesthetic responses to what has come to be called “El Procés”, tracing different ways in which the recent evolution of nationalist politics in Catalonia has been represented on contemporary Catalan stages (including the Teatre Lliure, the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, the Biblioteca de Catalunya and the Teatre Romea) through works by dramatists such as Sergi Belbel, Victoria Szpunberg, Narcís Comadira and Marc Rosich, and directors such as Lluís Pasqual, Xavier Albertí, Joan Yago and Oriol Broggi. After reflection on the limitations of dramatic forms for mediating the complexity of debates and positionings, alongside the ambivalent deployment and treatment of the theatrical in relation to the Catalan Independence movement, I go on to analyse different ways in which the sociopolitical trajectory of the pro-independence movement has been represented or re-framed on stage, ranging from attempts by Catalan dramatists to provide a space for negotiation of the velocity and impact of socio-cultural change, the use of on-stage translations from other, international contexts to mediate and reflect critically upon the local case for and against secession, to ephemeral experiments with documentary theatre in order to explore alternative ways of performing the relationship between the personal and the political. Placed in counterpoint with the overarching politics of framing and translation generated in the build-up to 1 October 2017 and its aftermath, these stagings emerge as dynamic environments of memory for past and more recent cultural trauma narratives