French theater festival Oui! brings eight new premieres to Barcelona

The fifth edition of the French theater festival Oui! will take place in Barcelona from January 28 to February 17 and feature eight works never seen before in Catalonia or Spain.

The 2022 festival is expanding beyond the Catalan capital, with the Sala Clavé in Sant Cugat del Vallès (close to Barcelona) and the Sala Trono in Tarragona (in the south of Catalonia) involved for the first time.

In Barcelona, two new venues – the Reial Cercle Artístic and the Casa Elizalde cultural center – will host plays for the first time as part of the festival, joining the Institut Français Barcelona and the DAU al sec theater.

Most of the plays will be performed in French, with Catalan or Spanish subtitles. One play that will not need subtitled, according to festival director, Mathilde Mottier, is Le Bal des Abeilles (The Dance of the Bees), a "very visual" show for children that explains "why bees are necessary for human life."

One of the highlights is sure to be the premiere of a new adaptation by Matthieu Tune of the Haitian playwright Jean-René Lemoine's L'Adoration, about a man and a woman who meet after years without seeing each other. Tune will direct and star in the play alongside Marie Micla.

Local talent will be to the fore in the 'Km 0' strand of the festival, featuring productions by artists who live in Barcelona: Pulsation, from the Les Impulsives theater company, and La Màgia Lenta (Slow Magic) by Denis Lachaud, performed by Marc Garcia Coté.

The festival has also set up its own publishing house, Edicicions Oui!, which launches with La Màgia Lenta, the Catalan translation of the original French work, La Magie Lente, available from Jaimes bookstore in Barcelona.

For the full program, see festivaldetheatreenfrancais.com.