FROM THURSDAY 3 ON SUNDAY 27/8
SAGUNT (Camp de Morvedre)
When a festival puts aside the Roman numerals to indicate the editions it carries on its back, it means that it carries a basket. Forty years ago we celebrated in Valencia a festival focused on deploying classical theater within a large structure built for this purpose in the year 50 d.C. At that time, "classic" theater was not performed, that was, simply, theater. In the Roman theater of ancient Saguntum, the Valencian Institute of Culture (IVC) serves every summer the programming of Sagunto in Scene, what do you drink from International Festival of Classic Theater of Mérida, the great reference, from which big names from the national scene come directly to mix with the talent of the land. Jaume Policarpo's for example, author of theOedipus Reus [3] of Bambalina Practicable Theatre which will start the festival investigating the expressive possibilities of puppets in the tragic context devised by Sophocles. Or the one of Sandra Monfort, who will play his electronic folk before the flamenco roots music of María José Llergo push to the stage [16]. Or the one of Pepa Cases, The Deluge, Eva Zapico, Cristina Gomez… We have great national figures, others, the ofAndres Lima, who directs The comedy of errors [12] Shakespeare's Pepón Nieto. It all starts with a death sentence but ends in a party, per error, in this piece that brings the mess to its maximum expression. Magüi Mira leads to Belen Rueda in Salome [26], that princess who claimed the head of John the Baptist on a silver tray, i Pepe Viyuela stage The clouds [19], a hooligan version of Aristophanes' comedy about complicity and inexhaustible relationships between parents and children. The latest proposal coming from Mérida is Pandataria [5], dance piece Chevy Murray, with Cayetana Guillén Cuervo, which takes its name from an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea where women who did not conform to the rules in the Roman Empire of the 1st century AD were exiled. The only national premiere of the festival will be dance: the choreographer Josef Nadj will bring together eight dancers from Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and the Congo in Mum [24]. The Off Romà program will be spread across the city with very interesting free shows. The magnificent Floated [11] by David Moreno and Cristina Calleja - Max Award for Best Street Theater Show - challenges gravity with a grand piano that floats vertically, Full house [6] is a very funny modern fable about coexistence in urban housing, in Nüshu [13] acrobats use denim clothes to sew, dance and dance, Bactana [25] combines the arts of a juggler and a trapeze artist to make the “más difícil todavía” and en Only [27] an obsessive and meticulous character plays with boxes that escape his control. Once again we have an August full of classical theatre, dance, circus and music at the Roman Theater of Sagunto. S.M.
