Activities

Activities

25—26 Season

From the Lliure, we present the activities related to the Season 25-26.
Colloquia, talks In situ, interviews at La plaça, play editions, reading clubs, activities linked to the city, exhibitions, and guided tours.
Look at what interests you (some of them are free!).

  • © Marta Mas Girones

    New edition of post-show colloquia moderated by the journalists Anna Guitart, Andrea Gumes and Queco Novell. This season we are offering:

    — 25/09 El Mestre i Margarita with Queco Novell - NEW DATE!
    — 06/11 Little Women with Andrea Gumes
    — 28/11 El día del Watusi with Queco Novell
    — 18/12 AI! La misèria ens farà feliços with Anna Guitart
    — 19/02 El barquer with Queco Novell
    — 26/02 Una festa a Roma with Marta Vives
    — 12/03 Dones valentes with Andrea Gumes
    — 16/04 Mil tres, say cheese with Marta Vives - NEW DATE!
    — 16/04 Els Estunmen with Andrea Gumes
    — 14/05 El fill with Queco Novell
    — 21/05 L’autora with Andrea Gumes
    — 22/05 Contra Antígona with Marta Vives

  • We invite you to come onstage and delve into the play in the company of experts on the underlying themes of some of this season’s shows.

    PRICE
    €6 / Subscribers and Generació Lliure €3.
    Booking required

    • Activism is useless

      26/05 at 19:00 p.m. — on 'Contra Antígona' stage - They said it about the labour movement when they went on strike at La Canadenca and got the eight-hour day. They said it to the first women who sought the right to vote through acts of disobedience, and it seemed impossible to change things. They said it to black South Africans fighting against apartheid through civil resistance. The history of humanity is full of examples in which the powerful seemed untouchable and injustice, immovable. The only fight you lose is the one you don’t get. And that’s what activism does. After each action, after one ‘Flotilla’, there will be another, and another, and another... Social struggles and disobedience are always ahead of their time.

      with Ada Colau

      Tickets

    • Being a woman and wanting to write: authority, body and power

      02/06 at 19:00 p.m. — on 'L'autora' stage - In 'The Writer', a young playwright confronts an established director. She says that the theater has become comfortable, commercial, and macho. He says it is more complicated. That structure is needed. That logic is needed. That tickets must be sold. But, deep down, they are not arguing about theater. They are arguing about who has the right to define reality. And this is the first great difficulty of women who want to write. Before their own room, women need authority: need to believe that what they have to say deserves to be said. Why is it the male voice that is considered universal? Why can a woman never forget that she is a body that awakens desire? Why can male rage be heroic and female rage become exaggerated? Why does society applaud male ambition and suspicions of female one? Women who want to write must be prepared to conquer authority, to negotiate with his body, manage anger, resist the domestication of the market and sustain his ambition without asking for forgiveness.

      with Eva Piquer

      Tickets

    Sessions held

    • Dear artists, don't think!

      22/09 at 18:00 p.m. — What is an artist without creative freedom? The same as a journalist who is forbidden to tell the truth. And in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and today's Russia, centuries of censorship with red lines drawn in all directions continue to this day. In Moscow today, Mikhail Bulgakov is an institution. And he had a hard time. The Master and Margarita is a torrent of imagination, but at the same time it allows for a series of interpretations of Stalin's regime that the powers that be at the time would not have tolerated. It is a cult work that he did not publish during his lifetime. Creating, thinking and analysing has always been a high-risk exercise in those lands. It hurts to think how much talent has been lost because of intense and widespread repression. That is why we suggest you join the devilish entourage of The Master and Margarita to enter the Moscow of Bulgakov's time and take a look at how artists, intellectuals and Russian society in general have suffered and tried to avoid censorship throughout their history.

      with Manel Alías

      See

    • Freedom and renunciation: the unfinished revolution of 'Little Women'

      28/10 at 19:00 p.m. — Written from the tension between Louisa May Alcott's life and ideals, 'Little Women', a seemingly innocent and traditional novel, hides a revolution by vindicating female autonomy and sowing the seeds of sisterhood. Each era has interpreted it differently: from a manual of virtue to a feminist icon. Despite reading it in the 21st century, with all the nuances that this entails, it seems that little women and women still cannot shake off the feeling of being trapped in family and social structures, and institutional policies that often reinforce the traditional roles that the March sisters already embodied in 1868.

      with Marta Orriols

      Watch

    • Irish peace at the end of silences

      09/02 at 19:00 p.m. — on 'El barquer' stage - In the Stormont Castle peace talks, Belfast, 1997-98, the dialogue was fruitful starting from a methodological protocol that made it easier to break the ancestral silences and, with them, the chronic hatreds. The top representatives of the two-armed groups killing each other on the streets of Ulster, Ian Paisley (Ulster Resistance-Democratic Unionist Party) and Martin McGuinness (IRA-Sinn Féin), they ended up becoming friends and sharing the highest ranks of the first governments of national concentration, prime minister and deputy prime minister. I was a special envoy of La Vanguardia at the time of the 'troubles' and followed on-site Stormont’s talks with sources from all sides, unionists, republicans and representatives of the English government. Besides, of course, interesting political and journalistic balances, I have even preserved in an emotional way personal enriching episodes from the end of that war. That also had an impact on the resolution of the Basque conflict, which has been one of the axes of my journalism.

      with Antoni Batista

      Watch

    • Revolutionary women, daily resistance

      03/03 at 19:00 p.m. — on 'Dones valentes' stage - Khadija, Hiyam, Gulan... also Benchymer, Maya and Nancy... Majd, Joumana or Samar. All are protagonists of the book ‘Dones valentes’ who follow their journey on the stage of the Teatre Lliure, proud and combative. But almost none of them felt brave when I spoke to them more than five years ago. They preferred to stand as survivors of male violence. We also do not yet know how to recognize the courage of women who are not individual heroines, but collective resistance in the Middle East and parts of Asia. Simplifying what we understand as 'women in the Arab world' and the challenges of feminism in such a diverse and changing region does not help us to recognize its strength. Nor do we count these testimonies from the West, too often appropriating, misrepresenting or directly avoiding their account. Many women risk their lives just to exist. If I now had to rewrite some chapters of the book - such as Gaza, Afghanistan, or Rojava - I’m afraid there wouldn’t be all the ones I found. We are having our heart in our mouth, knowing that in a fight we like to say of all we have forgotten again.

      with Txell Feixas Torras

      See

    • Caring for the elderly: reflections from ethics

      17/03 at 19:00 p.m. — on 'Una festa a Roma' stage - We must re-signify the words, because they also have history and we do not always understand the same thing. We will focus on the need to re-signify the notions of "care", "elderly people" and "ethics" because, depending on how we understand them, caring for the elderly will be ethical or uncared. Ethics refers to what it provides a good life or bad treatment, despite the willingness to take charge of someone’s dependency and vulnerability. In morally plural societies, caring is a complex set of activities that do not only depend on the good relationship between the caregiver and who is object of the care. It involves many aspects, among which is also questioning implicit assumptions that we do not necessarily share.

      with Begoña Román

      and the involvement of Fundació Pasqual Maragall

      Watch

    • What does "being a man" mean?

      28/04 at 19:00 p.m. — on 'Els Estunmen' stage - What does "being a man" mean? How has the concept of masculinity evolved over the centuries, until it became contemporary? How do cultural and media representations of masculinity affect one’s self-perception? Lluís Rivera and Maria Adell will debate, from practice and theory, around these questions, always putting at the centre the male body, which is the raw material and the fundamental tool with which both Rivera and the rest of specialists (or stuntmen) work which appear as central characters of the opera created by Nao Albet and Marcel Borràs. In this two-pronged talk, the male body, in its different meanings and versions, becomes the battlefield that allows us to question concepts such as identity or gender and highlight the tensions between the physical and the digital, the heroic and the abject. violence and tenderness, the sublime and the earthly.

      with María Adell, Óscar Dorta and Lluís Rivera (In Extremis), and Marcel Borràs collaboration

      Watch

  • La plaça is back in conjunction with CaixaForum+. It is a gathering place for in-depth conversations with some of the creators who are at the Lliure this season. There will be five chapters in a revamped format that seeks unique places away from the noise and hustle-and-bustle to encourage a calm, rich, open dialogue that enables us to examine the artists’ creative universes and their personal perspectives on the world and this time we are sharing.

    You can access the new chapters of La plaça via the free CaixaForum+ platform.

    Nao Albet, Marcel Borràs and Miquel Missé, in conversation
    After nearly two decades of shared artistic work transforming the Catalan theatre scene, Nao Albet (Barcelona, 1990) and Marcel Borràs (Olot, 1989) make the leap into opera with the premiere of their most ambitious project to date: Els Estunmen.
    In this fourth episode of the second season of La plaza, the creative duo speaks with sociologist Miquel Missé about the key ideas underlying the piece: violence and the myth-making construction of the heroic figure.
    From the outskirts of the city, the three reflect on how masculinity and epic narrative are embodied through stunt performers—bodies that are placed at the service of risk and fiction. Meanwhile, from Montjuïc, we see rehearsals for the production in progress, featuring music by composer Fernando Velázquez and the orchestral ensemble of the Gran Teatre del Liceu.

    Watch the conversation

    Clara Segura and Julio Manrique, in conversation
    From starting together in the world of performance to directing two of the most renowned shows of the Barcelona theater season in parallel theaters: in this third chapter of La plaça, Julio Manrique (Barcelona, 1973) and Clara Segura (Barcelona, 1974) are located in the Park of the Mirador del Besòs shortly after El barquer and Una festa a Roma. From the edge of the city, both artists talk about making the transition from performer to director, but also about their beginnings in the sector, shared adventures and theater as a way of life. Before, from the halls of Gràcia and Montjuïc, we will see how the last details of their two shows are refined in the final stretch of rehearsals.

    Watch the interview

    Gabriel Calderón and Joan Carreras, in conversation
    Gabriel Calderón (Montevideo, 1982) returns to the Catalan stage to premiere his new play: Ai! La misèria ens farà feliços. After the success of History of a Wild Boar (or Something About Richard)—the first Catalan-language production to be staged at the Avignon Festival—the acclaimed Uruguayan playwright and director once again collaborates with actor Joan Carreras (Barcelona, 1973) on a new production that will be performed at Teatre Lliure de Gràcia.
    In this new episode of La plaza, filmed in the midst of rehearsals, we join the director and the performer on the Mühlberg bridge, in Barcelona’s Carmel neighborhood, to hear them reflect on Calderón’s long career, his way of understanding and living theatre, and the friendship they share.

    Watch the interview

    Àlex Rigola and Milena Busquets, in conversation
    Àlex Rigola (Barcelona, 1969) returns to directing on a large scale after eight years devoted to more intimate and essential theatre. He does so to open the 2025–26 season of the Teatre Lliure with his version of The Master and Margarita, the great novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. In this first episode of the second season of La plaza, Rigola and the writer Milena Busquets (Barcelona, 1972) go up to the Torre Baró viewpoint to look back on the career of one of the leading figures of contemporary theatre in Spain, and to talk about art, philosophy, and, above all, life. And from Montjuïc, we follow first-hand the creative process of the director’s latest production, from the beginning of rehearsals to the premiere at the Sala Fabià Puigserver.

    Watch the interview

  • © Emili Serra

    Llum de guàrdia

    The Llum de guàrdia collection of theatre texts, which we launched last season in a co-publication venture with Comanegra, is continuing. In addition to enjoying the titles that have been published the last season (L’herència, Prosopopeya, Fantàstic Ramon, Cor dels amants and La brama del cérvol), we are adding six new ones to the collection, in paper and ebook.

    Happy reading!

    PRICES
    paper book - from €12,5 to €18
    ebook - from €7,99 to €9,99

    FOR SALE
    in the bookshops
    online
    at the theatre box office (limited copies)

    L'autora
    by Ella Hickson

    A young writer wants to make the revolution, to find a new way to tell a story. To break the schemes of an imaginary dominated by men in the construction of fictions. To start from zero. But the question is: how? And at what price? Ella Hickson explores the mechanisms of patriarchy in contemporary society and in the field of creation with a scathing and uncomfortable play about authorship, desire, power, and visible and invisible violence that traverse both scene and life.

    El fill
    by Jon Fosse

    An elderly couple looks through the window. They wait for the arrival of their son, who has been away for a long time. There are fewer people in the village. The young people leave. Everyone leaves. Almost no one stays. Finally, the son comes, but nothing will be as they had imagined. Norwegian author Jon Fosse, 2023 Literature Nobel Prize winner, signs this tense, beautiful and subtle play on family. It is a simple and harsh story with the sobriety of language and the dramatic plot that characterizes the playwriter.

    El barquer
    de Jez Butterworth

    One day in late August, in the turbulent Northern Ireland of 1981. While a group of young IRA prisoners claim political prisoner status with a hunger strike that has already killed people, the Carney farm is celebrating harvest day: a holiday which will be suddenly interrupted by an unexpected event. The English author Jez Butterworth signs this monumental family history: an epic of loyalties and fractures, of betrayals and redemptions, which crosses the Anglo-Irish conflict of the last quarter of the twentieth century and explores its intimate consequences.

    Manifest Mangione
    by Carol López

    It is a December night in the USA, the CEO of a large company is shot to dead. The bullets have engraved three words: Deny, Defend, Depose. The young man who shot them, from a good family in Baltimore and an exemplary student at a private university, will become a media hero overnight. The playwright and director Carol López investigates the violence of the neoliberal system from the crime that shocked the United States in autumn 2024 and draws the x-ray of a society on the edge, the current mechanisms of construction of public opinion and its fascination with this murder.

    AI! La misèria ens farà feliços
    by Gabriel Calderón

    In a world dominated by AI, four old renowned actors have become stage technicians because robots have taken their place. But what will happen when one of the machines refuses to go onstage to play its role in Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream? What happens when a robot doesn’t want to act? The characters in this humorous piece reflect on the usefulness of art, the strength of interpretation, the identity and meaning of this craft in a context where humanity seems to be losing relevance.

    Una festa a Roma
    de Marc Artigau i Queralt

    An elderly woman begins to lose her memory, and her son decides to take her to a nursing home. There, and against all odds, as her memories gradually fade away, she will have the opportunity to experience an intense -and probably final- love story. This is a poignant comedy by Marc Artigau i Queralt about love and desire in the so-called «old age», about the erratic paths of a memory that crumbles like a sand castle and those who care, as well as they know, for the people they love.

  • We are launching the Club Lliure Biblioteques Públiques de Catalunya, a book club via mobile phone on the Tellfy communication platform of Library Service. We talk about the books we are publishing and others related to our shows. We hold periodic digital gatherings, and you can come to some of our rehearsals. And we have a calendar of the theatre activities in the city and further afield!

    During the season, it will be also with Biblioteques de Barcelona several reading clubs about some plays in the programme. Moderated by actor and cultural communicator Nil Martín.

    Also, in the net of Biblioteques públiques de Catalunya, we have also launched the new reading clubs Llegir els Teatre amb el Lliure, with more than thirty attached libraries throughout the country. Check which one is closest to you!

    More books, more theatre, more connection.

  • The bar at the Gràcia venue is hosting two activities which share their connection with the city’s social stakeholders in the fields of inclusion and education. Both shows are free of charge during the bar’s timetable.

    Fabià Puigserver amb mirada d'infant

    This is a group show of the artistic materials created by students from kindergarten to sixth grade at Barcelona’s La Sedeta School. They have resulted from their examination of the figure of Fabià Puigserver—a set and costume designer, stage director and founder of the Teatre Lliure—as part of the Escoles Tàndem project promoted by the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera. It is a visual journey through the life course of Puigserver and the beginnings of the Teatre Lliure, reinterpreted from a clean, playful and creative perspective, curated by the set designer Sebastià Brosa.

    DATES
    from 12/02 to 31/07

    Mescladís, 20 anys creant oportunitats

    Mescladís is celebrating twenty years with a retrospective that pays homage to the community that fuels its mission of inclusion and sustainability. The exhibition showcases the stories, challenges and key milestones that consolidate the social impact of the Fundació Mescladís year after year. It is a benchmark project in the right to migrate with dignity in which food and culture converge to serve as a bridge towards more egalitarian universes.

    DATES
    from 25/09 to 10/02

  • © Sílvia Poch

    Guided tours

    Would you like to learn about the history of the Lliure and the Montjuïc building? These guided tours will take you around the most secret spots in what used to be the Palace of Agriculture of the 1929 Barcelona International Expo, a building officially inaugurated by King Alphonse XIII, and later the Barcelona Flower Market from 1962 to 1984. You’ll enter the dressing rooms and the Mirror Hall (Do you know where it got that name?); you’ll walk around backstage and step onto the stage; you’ll head down into the pit to find out what stands with spiralift are like; and you’ll then climb to the top, perched above everything in the Sala Fabià Puigserver.

    DATES
    Saturdays 13/12 (only at 10.30 a.m.), 10/01, 07/02, 07/03, 07/03, 18/04 and 23/05
    If you want to come in a group, you can arrange a tailor-made visit.

    LANGUAGE
    In Catalan

    TIMETABLES
    At 10.30 a.m. and 12.30 p.m.

    PRICE
    Reservation €2 / Free for subscribers and Generació Lliure

    TICKETS

    MORE INFORMATION AND CONTACT
    [email protected]

    Virtual tour

    In this interactive space you can enter the main parts of the Teatre Lliure facilities in both Montjuïc and Gràcia. The virtual tour contains all the same written and audio information as an in-person guided tour. Discover the spaces and the history of the Lliure from your home!

  • 5th Teatre Lliure – UB Awards

    We are once again collaborating with the Màster Construcció i Representació d’Identitats Culturals (CRIC) and the Grup de Recerca Contemporary British Theatre Barcelona of the Universitat de Barcelona in evaluating and awarding prizes to the best TFG and TFM for contemporary theatre studies. This award was established in the 20/21 season to encourage research in this field. The Best Master’s Thesis (TFM) is awarded with its publication by Edicions UB. Currently, the call is addressed to students throughout the UB and its affiliated schools. The call for the 5th edition was opened on 28 November 2025 and will close on 30 January 2026. The act of delivery will be at the end of academic year 25/26.

    DATE AND TIME
    to be determined

    Place
    Montjuïc. Espai Lliure

    Language
    In Catalan and Spanish

    PRICE
    Free admission upon reservation

    • 'Ser y no ser' with Gabriel Calderón

      Inaugural conference of the CRIC Master of the UB

      Watch

    Pallassos a la plaça

    Yet another year we are partnering with the NGO Clowns Without Borders in its mission to make the most disadvantaged people laugh. Throughout the season, you can attend two free clown shows in Plaça Margarida Xirgu.

    Mark the dates now!

    08/11 and 09/05
    Plaça Margarida Xirgu
    At 12.00
    Free

    Viu Montjuïc / UNLOCK THE CITY!

    We are celebrating the fifth edition of Viu Montjuïc, the weekend full of cultural activities and nature organised by Barcelona City Hall in conjunction with UNLOCK THE CITY!, the Creative Europe project that concludes this autumn.

    On Sunday 05 October, the artist Alexandra Laudo , with the collaboration of also creator Anna Puigjaner, will commission the action Apagada, a poetic and political claim on the darkness inspired by the blackouts by artist Tres, on the occasion of the 9th anniversary of his death. This action will close a festive day that will take place at the Teatre Lliure in the framework of Viu Montjuïc,.

    The celebration is structured in two parts. The first, Massa Mare Fronteres, comes from the Fundació Mescladís and the community action entities of the Poble-sec neighborhood, and is a festive show in Plaça Margarida Xirgu that will end inside the theater. And the second, Apagada, is an action inspired by the blackouts of the artist Tres, who was specialized in research on silence. A poetic and political act of symbolic vindication of darkness, silence and night. It will be a short but intense action of resistance to the culture of hyperproduction and continuous operability, which will take place in the foyer of the theatre.

    05/10 - NEW DATE!
    In Montjuïc
    Free

    Barcelona Dibuixa with Oriol Bellvitge

    Yet another year we are partnering with Barcelona Dibuixa, the drawing festival led by the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona that is holding its fifteenth edition this year. The festival aims to promote drawing not only as a technique of creation and artistic expression but also as a tool of learning, play and communication, as well as an intellectual process.

    This time, the workshop at the Lliure will be led by Oriol Bellvitge, a designer and stage creator who will connect drawing with the theatre arts with the proposal Dues cares del ser. In the most iconic scene of Hamlet, the prince holds a skull and wonders: "To be or not to be, this is the question." The activity starts from this existential dilemma and transforms it into a visual experience. Like Hamlet, we face symbolically the duality of existence: life and death, what is seen and what is hidden.

    18/10
    Montjuïc. Hivernacle
    From 16.00 to 20.00 p.m.
    Free