Presentation
The Festival
We are a performing arts festival mainly in the cities of Girona and Salt between the months of October and December, a window open to the world and a meeting point between the Catalan and international scene, a space for the display of theatre proposals and a platform for supporting the creation and production of shows, an impeller of the professional exchange networks. We are a performing arts festival that goes beyond the framework of the festival itself. At Temporada Alta we have been become one of the national and international reference events, and we have earned a place on the map as one of the best European festivals.
The programme
The big names on the international scene share the stage with national and emerging talents. Year after year we try to offer a wide and varied programme, a sample of current trends. We work for plurality, to incorporate genres and proposals of all kinds (circus, dance, live music and cinema) to a programme complemented by a wide range of parallel activities. The interest in attracting and convincing all kinds of people, with different tastes and interests, has turned Temporada Alta into an unmissable event.
An exhibition space
Temporada Alta is understood to be a space for creation and adventure, both for artists and the public, and we are particularly understood as a space for exhibiting the most outstanding personalities on the European scene and the rest of the world. Big names such as Jan Fabre, Angélica Liddel, Krystian Lupa, Thomas Ostermeier, Peter Brook, Àlex Rigola, Claudio Tolcachir, Romeo Castellucci, Joan Ollé, Oskaras Koršunovas, Lluís Pasqual o Christoph Marthaler, among others, have left their mark and a long history of unique and exceptional functions.
International projection
We target a significant part of the programming to shows from around the world. The international vocation is one of the main features of the Festival. Over the years we’ve been building bridges between European theatre and Ibero-American theatre and have exported Temporada Alta to various Ibero-American cities. For us, the Festival is a meeting point between the Catalan and international scene. A space to show international productions and, at the same time, an opportunity to showcase what is done in Catalonia and promote the internationalization of the scene and the Catalan companies.
Motor of creation
We collaborate in the production or co-production of a large part of the shows that we premièred during the Festival. We consider that this line of productions is an indispensable tool for placing Temporada Alta and the Catalan scene at the centre of the European and international scene. We want to stimulate performing arts creation, become a nerve centre of the country’s dramaturgy and increase the international presence of Catalan shows. We weave alliances and complicities with companies and producers, with public and private theatres, national and international. We follow a production line dedicated to contacting international directors such as Kristian Lupa, Guy Cassiers or Claudio Tolcachir with Catalan artistic and technical teams. We collaborate with institutions, festivals and agents around the world. And we have managed to position ourselves as one of the main creative and productive motors in the country.
Meeting space
We are a meeting point for the different agents in the sector: companies and programmers, new creators and national and international professionals, public and artists, public and organizers, actors and playwrights, journalists and performing arts professionals, producers and technicians. We try to provide spaces to promote professional exchange networks, to boost the sector, to be a springboard for companies and scenic proposals. During the Programmer Week, for example, we present a selection of shows from Catalan companies to programmers from all over the world in order to facilitate their international projection.
More than performing arts
We are, they say, the “best autumn festival in the south of Europe”. A specific performing arts festival, although also dedicated to music and cinema, two artistic disciplines that have been gaining presence and relevance in the last years. At Temporada Alta we organise concerts, shows with live music and screenings of great names in national and international cinema. We will never get tired of exploring new contact points between disciplines, trying to open new channels of dialogue and to establish correspondences between the performing arts and the big screen.
The audience, the citizens!
At Temporada Alta we are at the public’s side, close to the audience. We establish a fruitful relationship, making them an agent of the Festival, involving them in other areas of the stage experience, inviting them to participate in the creation of shows or the organization of events, encouraging -They think, comment, debate, talk about the experience, relate to the culture from a more participative position, to open channels of participation beyond the audience. We see the audience as an active part of programming, and not as a simple consumer.
Social and educational commitment
It is one of Temporada Alta’s aims: to bring the cultural proposals to the greatest possible number of citizens and be a festival accessible to all. Apart from incorporating shows aimed at family audiences or the younger ones, we approach programming to groups at risk of social exclusion and promote educational programs for young people, schools and theatres. At Temporada Alta we promote various socio-educational projects and we bring the performing arts to schools with the proposal A Tempo of the Fundació La Ciutat Invisible, a project of interaction and exchange experiences between the educational world and the cultural world. These actions exemplify the commitment towards a social model that has, among its basic axes, access to culture.
Relationship with the city and the territory
We are a festival deeply rooted in the territory and the cultural fabric of the region of Girona. With the neuralgic centre in Girona and Salt, we have extended, on some occasions, to several towns in the province (Palafrugell, Banyoles…). Over the last years we have grown territorially and we have multiplied the number of exhibition spaces. We want to exert an irradiating capital, extending the network of cities and institutions linked to Temporada Alta, bringing the theatre to unconventional spaces (museums, monasteries, libraries…) and always trying to bring it as close as possible to neighbourhoods, schools, public spaces, the public… Without ever losing sight, of course, the will to turn the territory into a centre of powerful creative creation and to project it internationally.
Awards and recognitions
At Temporada Alta we have accumulated prizes and recognitions. We want to highlight the Noves Tendències Max Award (2012) and the Butaca Honorífic Prize (2003) for the appreciation of the theatre. Salvador Sunyer, Festival director, was awarded the National Theatre Prize (2008) and the Temporada Alta promotional shorts have received the Grand Laus Prize (L’incendi, 2018; The Pleasure Island, 2017) and the Laus d’Or Prize (Tragèdia, el cant de la cabra, 2015). Temporada Alta has also been awarded the Cactus Prize for the Best Communication Campaign (2017) and, for some years now, the Observatorio de la Cultura de la Fundación Contemporánea regards us among the best cultural events in Spain. And the awards given to shows that have been going through Temporada Alta during all these years of festival are virtually incomparable. To give just one example, the Max award to the best actor was given to Lluís Homar for Terra Baixa i Lluís Homar in 2015.
For more information on the Temporada Alta prizes or prizes related to productions, co-productions and releases of the Festival, click here.
The press has said…
“Temporada Alta still is, I will not tire of saying it, the best festival in Spain”
Marcos Ordoñez, El País
“The offer comes to confirm, yet another year, that the one in Girona is the Spanish festival that has the greatest pull in the international market for contemporary theatre”
Raquel Vidales, El País
“A first-class European performing arts festival”
José Carlos Sorribes, El Periódico
“The evolution of the Temporada Alta festival in Girona and Salt is like that of Cinderella turning into a princess”
Justo Barranco, La Vanguardia
“A first-class competition that has put the province of Girona on the world map of the performing arts scene”
M.Güell, ABC
“The country needs this festival just like the air that it breathes”
Ramon Oliver, La Vanguardia
“Being able to attend high-level shows from outside the Country, in just over two months, is truly a privilege that any lover of performing arts can only celebrate”
Manuel Guerrero, La Vanguardia – Cultura/s
“Is culture useless? Festivals like Temporada Alta prove that it is essential to remember and strengthen souls and consciences “
Jordi Bordes, El Punt Avui
“It is part of Temporada Alta’s DNA committing to local creativity, often co-producing; this is one of the Festival’s raison d’être. And the programme this year makes it clear again”
Ramon Oliver, La Vanguardia
“Temporada Alta has being the gateway to Catalonia for the best international theatre in its DNA”
Diari Ara
“To organise a good festival of reference in Europe, only good taste and desire is needed”
Time Out
“Temporada Alta continues to assert as a window open to the world”
Eduard Molner, Recomana.cat
“Temporada Alta is already a well-established festival that can be compared to the best European festivals”
María José Ragué-Arias, El Mundo
“The Girona festival is still one of the best showcases of contemporary European theatre”
Victoria Slavuski, La Vanguardia – Cultura/s
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