Shakespearean Performance in Catalan: Adrià Gual and the Emergence of the Theatre Director (1903–1940)

Abstract

ABSTRACT From 1898, the year of the foundation of the theatre company Intimate Theatre, to his work at the New Company of Catalan Theatre around the 1910s, to his last stagings as head of the Catalan School of Drama in the early 1930s, Adrià Gual is recognized as a pioneer of Spanish and Catalan theatre direction. In this period of over thirty years, Gual produced dozens of shows that ranged from the classical plays of Greek theatre to the latest texts from European, Spanish and Catalan playwrights. And among these, strategically translated into Catalan, a few of Shakespeare’s dramas helped Gual to develop his project to renovate the Barcelona stage and provide a theatrical model that would encourage the development of Catalan culture. This article analyses the way Gual’s Shakespearean productions were intimately connected at the local level with the educated Catalan elites and the establishment of their cultural identity while, connected to a larger continental perspective, Shakespeare’s plays functioned within Intimate Theatre, New Company of Catalan Theatre and the Catalan School of Drama as an instrument to renovate theatrical practice by resorting to the models provided by European stage directors.