Spain: Engaging with 'La Crisis' Through Theatre

In depth production reviews of Juan Carlos Rubio’s Las heridas del viento (London’s Courtyard Theatre, 2015), Federico García at the Grec Festival (2015), Alberto Conejero’s La piedra oscura (Centro Dramático Nacional, 2015), Atchúusss! (Madrid’s Latina theatre, 2015)

The Unknown, the Unexpected and the Uncanny: A New Lorca, Three New Catalan Productions, and a Few Extras

In depth production reviews of El público (Àlex Rigola, Teatro de la Abadía, 2015) Els veïns de Dalt (Cesc Gay, Teatre Romea, 2015), Panorama desde el pont/A View from the Bridge (George Lavaudant, Teatre Romea, 2016), Infamià (Pere Riera, Teatre Villaroel, 2015), Hotel Paradiso (Familie Flöz, Teatre Lliure, 2016)

Terrassa’s TNT Festival: The New, the Usual and the Ugly

In depth production reviews at Terrassa’s 2016 TNT festival: 4 (Rodrigo García, Teatre Principal), Anarchy (Societat Doctor Alonso, Amic de les Arts), A Placer (Labuena Compañía, Sala Cupula), All In (Atresbandes, Sala Maria Plans), Pacífico #3 (Txalo Toloza, Sala Maria Plans), Veracruz (Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, Nova Jazz Cava), L’effete de Serge (Philippe Quesne, Teatre Alegria

Re-framing the Classics: La Cubana Reinvent Rusiñol and the Lliure Revisit Beaumarchais

In depth production reviews of La Cubana’s Gente de bien (dir. Jordi Milán, Tivoli Theatre Barcelona, 2015) and Les noces de Figaro (dir. Lluis Homar from Fabià Puigserver’s original production, 2015)

Memory, Silence, and Democracy in Spain: Frederico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish Civil War, and the Law of Historical Memory

What does it mean to unearth the dead? What is contemporary society’s responsibility to the disappeared? How do we live with the ghosts of history? In the midst of the search for the body of Federico García Lorca in 2009, Emilio Silva, cofounder and president of Spain’s Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH)—a national organization assisting in the location and exhumation of the graves of Spain’s desaparecidos, or disappeared, during the Civil War and its aftermath—wrote of “the silent bones of Federico García Lorca and the skeleton of our democracy.” This essay traces the ways in which the remains of one of Europe’s most resonant twentieth-century dramatists haunt contemporary Spain. In mapping the wider ideological framework in which his work has been produced in Spain, it engages with the politics of a statesanctioned “official” history that has shaped his appropriation by the nation-state. Using the search for Lorca’s corpse in 2009 as a central focus, it examines how the exhumation of mass graves undertaken in twenty-first-century Spain can be viewed as a move toward a more nuanced understanding both of the events of the past and the fissures of the present in a country where issues of justice have been compromised for too long by a culture of silence

Arts and Humanities Research Evaluation: No Metrics Please, Just Data

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to make an explicit case for the use of data with contextual information as evidence in arts and humanities research evaluations rather than systematic metrics. Design/methodology/approach – A survey of the strengths and limitations of citation-based indicators is combined with evidence about existing uses of wider impact data in the arts and humanities, with particular reference to the 2014 UK Research Excellence Framework. Findings – Data are already used as impact evidence in the arts and humanities but this practice should become more widespread. Practical implications – Arts and humanities researchers should be encouraged to think creatively about the kinds of data that they may be able to generate in support of the value of their research and should not rely upon standardised metrics. Originality/value – This paper combines practices emerging in the arts and humanities with research evaluation from a scientometric perspective to generate new recommendations

Development of a metric of aquatic invertebrates for volunteers (MAIV): a simple and friendly biotic metric to assess ecological quality of streams

Citizen science activities, involving local people in volunteer-supported and sustainable monitoring programs, are common. In this context, the objective of the present work was to develop a simple Metric of Aquatic Invertebrates for Volunteers (MAIV), including a user-friendly tool that can be easily accessed by volunteers, and to evaluate the e ciency of a volunteer monitoring program following an audit procedure. To obtain MAIV values, macroinvertebrate communities were reduced to 18 surrogate taxa, which represented an acceptable compromise between simplicity, e ciency, and reproducibility of the data, compared to the regular Water Framework Directive monitoring. When compared to results obtained with the National Classification System of Portugal, MAIV accurately detected moderate, poor, and bad ecological status. Thus, MAIV can be used by volunteers as a complement to the o cial monitoring program, as well as a prospective early warning tool for local problems related to ecological quality. Volunteers were students supervised by their teachers. Results obtained by volunteers were compared to results obtained by experts on macroinvertebrate identification to measure the e ciency of the procedure, by counting gains and losses on sorting, and identification. Characteristics of groups of volunteers (age and school level) did not influence significantly the e ciency of the procedure, and generally results of volunteers and experts matched.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Maria Casares: l'Espagne, L'Exil et le Repoussoir

María Casares has often been displaced onto histories of French theatre as one of the seminal tragédiennes of the twentieth century, a key collaborator of Jean Vilar’s at the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) between 1954 and 1959 and an important Shakespearean actress (performing roles associated with sexual authority and transgression: Lady Macbeth in 1954, Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Le Songe d'un nuit d'été) in 1959 and Cleopatra in 1975). Her association with two of France’s most dissonant post-World War II playwrights, Jean Genet and Bernard-Marie Koltès further reinforced her status as an outsider, performing ‘otherness’ in her realization of the contradictory mother figures of Les Paravants (1966, 1983) and Quai Ouest (1986). Casares, however, learned French only on her arrival in Paris in November 1936 and her differance, commented on by Roland Barthes in a 1954 essay, was played out on the French stage and screen across both across roles that referenced her Spanish origins as the daughter of a prominent Republican politician, forced to flee Spain as Franco’s rebel forces seized control of the nation. My focus in this article is on ventures seen and presented in Spain, most specifically El adefesio (1976), a play written in exile by Rafael Alberti and directed by José Luis Alonso in Madrid the year after General Francisco Franco’s death. This project, alongside her other Spanish-language ventures, indicates the complex ways in which she ‘performed exile’ to a nation-state haunted by the specters of those who had died or fled during the Civil War and its aftermath

The contribution of cooking appliances and residential traffic proximity to aerosol personal exposure

Purpose Indoor and outdoor factors affect personal exposure to air pollutants. Type of cooking appliance (i.e. gas, electricity), and residential location related to traffic are such factors. This research aims to investigate the effect of cooking with gas and electric appliances, as an indoor source of aerosols, and residential traffic as outdoor sources, on personal exposures to particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter lower than 2.5 μm (PM2.5), black carbon (BC), and ultrafine particles (UFP). Methods Forty subjects were sampled for four consecutive days measuring personal exposures to three aerosol pollutants, namely PM2.5, BC, and UFP, which were measured using personal sensors. Subjects were equally distributed into four categories according to the use of gas or electric stoves for cooking, and to residential traffic (i.e. houses located near or away from busy roads). Results/conclusion Cooking was identified as an indoor activity affecting exposure to aerosols, with mean concentrations during cooking ranging 24.7–50.0 μg/m3 (PM2.5), 1.8–4.9 μg/m3 (BC), and 1.4 × 104 –4.1 × 104 particles/cm3 (UFP). This study also suggest that traffic is a dominant source of exposure to BC, since people living near busy roads are exposed to higher BC concentrations than those living further away from traffic. In contrast, the contribution of indoor sources to personal exposure to PM2.5 and UFP seems to be greater than from outdoor traffic sources. This is probably related to a combination of the type of building construction and a varying range of activities conducted indoors. It is recommended to ensure a good ventilation during cooking to minimize exposure to cooking aerosols

Adiós Arturo: La Cubana de Vuelta:

This review article looks at the newest show, Adiós Arturo by one of Spain's most acclaimed theatre companies, La Cubana first presented in 201