Barcelona in the Spotlight

‘It is, hands down, one of the most spectacular things I have ever participated in’ - Aileen Marie Kelly on co-founding Blue Book, the international theatre company, born in and inspired by the heart of Catalunya.

When you think of Barcelona, its eclectic architecture, gothic neighbourhood and distinctive geography are what usually spring to mind. What is less well-known is that the city has a rich cultural history of the performing arts. The spirit of theatre ripples through both the gilded stalls of 19th century theatres, such as Gran Teatre de Liceu, hosting classical operas and ballets, as well as the street performances, cercavila parades and experimental fábriques de creació. Fifty years after the cessation of the Franco dictatorship, Catalunya is bustling with artists from all over the world. There are now over one hundred and fifty professional performance companies in the region, supported by the lnstitut de Cultura of the City Council of Barcelona, several of them founded by ex-pats.

Aileen left Chicago after finishing university to backpack around the world. Naturally, after reaching Barcelona, there was no going back. ‘Once you live in Barcelona, it's very difficult not to live here anymore. Every time I have to travel, I come back here and think: Oh God, thank you! I'm so grateful for this city. It's almost impossible not to be in love with it. Ask anyone who lives here, they’ll agree’.

It was here she co-founded Blue Book in 2022, a multicultural theatre company producing plays in English for the local and expat community. ‘There is no better city than Barcelona for this. It just attracts creative people; it really does. It's an extraordinarily artistic city. The mentality of the people here, along with the weather, permits this amazing array of workshops, performances, shows, social life and outdoor festivals to exist. It's great. It's amazing. The local council invests a lot of money and cultural programs are supported heavily by the local population and the Generalitat.’

The city inspires Aileen every day; I can see her eyes sparkle as she looks around her neighbourhood. ‘You honestly find little pieces of art in every corner of this city. Art is everywhere you look. It envelops you’. The ground we walk on is emblematically detailed. ‘You can find these small design details even on the pavement below our feet; the Panots are an example. They are concrete tiles that were designed specifically for the city; they are wonderful, chiselled flowers that you can find throughout Barcelona and its surrounding towns’. The four-petalled design can be originally attributed to the Modernist architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, but Panots became popularised when they were mass-produced at the beginning of the 20th century by Casa Escofet under a government rollout. Now it’s hard to go anywhere without wandering over concrete flowers, a charming touch to the city’s streetscape.

Aileen points at a peach-coloured Noucentisme building across the street. ‘That one looks like a giant embellished cake for instance’. She adores the cityscape, ‘the streets, the architecture, the brilliant city planning’. Barcelona is most famous for its Catalan Art Nouveau architecture, but its amalgam of Neo-Mudéjar, gothic, and modern styles are what make up the city’s inimitable architectural tapestry.

Architecturally revered for its impeccable grid plan of chamfered-corner blocks, a bird’s-eye view of L’Eixample isn’t dissimilar to a terracotta bubble wrap. The stylish barrio, home to the famed La Sagrada Familia, is where I meet Aileen, at the Cotton House Hotel. She had invited me to attend the photoshoot for Blue Book’s upcoming play, The Dinner Party by Neil Simon. Leading me to the library, we marvel at the gold-detailed ceiling panels hosting more minimalistic and meringue-like chandeliers. While living in Barcelona, Aileen has been studying interior design, giving her an eye for detail that feeds into her passion for theatre set design and scenography. I can sense her appetite for staging as she describes the set opportunities for one of her recent plays as a ‘delicious’ opportunity.

The hotel’s lavish décor offers the perfect location to promote the play, which is set in an up-scale Parisian restaurant – the setting a shrewd juxtaposition to the defective characters that come to grace the stage at the dinner party. Farce confronts reality in Simon’s eliciting comedy when three bickering ex-spouses are brought together in a mysteriously cunning plan for a reunion, a ninety-minute play interrogating divorce, love, and loss.

I ask Aileen why she thinks the play is relevant to a local audience. ‘Barcelona's quite a youthful city given that there is very little ageism. You meet people from all walks of life with these incredibly distinct, romantic experiences, and so I believe that this particular story is extremely relatable to so many.’ Love, loss, and obsession are universal experiences, Aileen reflects. ‘The best part about this play is that these characters take it to the extreme of falling in love and then splitting up. They lay out the drama of what we've all been through, at one time or another: the obsession of the other. It reminds us of the little things that one does for the other when in love and how crazy love can make us. These characters get on stage and admit all of that out loud’.

Like all Blue Book’s productions, The Dinner Party’s cast and crew are multinational. The actors are from Venezuela, Mexico, the United States, Ireland, France, and Catalunya, while the assistant director is from Sweden. ‘We are an international theatre company and we work in English because it’s the language that we all have in common. We create plays together for the community’, Aileen tells me.

‘That's the most beautiful part. A big effort is made to collaborate with as many people as possible, which ends up creating a large mix of international humans’. The Dinner Party’s director is French. ‘He's wonderful’, Aileen grins. ‘With more than forty years on stage as a professional, including Juilliard and the Paris Opera House, he has an incredible amount of experience in different fields – theatre, dance, visual arts… he has been able to create a unique experience combining text, music and dance. At times, this play becomes almost like a musical fairytale’.

It seems to me that the heart of Blue Book theatre is its multiculturalism, and its openness to learn from sharing: stories, backgrounds, and cultures. I ask Aileen about the opportunities offered by intercultural theatre. ‘It is, hands down, one of the most spectacular things I have ever participated in, in my entire life. To see all these human beings, from all different parts of the world, coming together, working together and collaborating, to tell a story… it’s really something special. They are capable of forgetting their differences, despite where they're from, despite their distinct backgrounds or their individual stories, despite the education they have. It’s spectacular to witness – to see the evolution of these groups, aiming towards one goal, all while accepting each other, moving past any language or cultural boundary, blind to how difficult it can get sometimes.’

Understandably, there are still obvious obstacles to performing in a city’s third language. Aileen smiles at me. ‘Personally, I adore stories that make you feel as if you've changed once you've left the theatre. I genuinely appreciate the ones with heavy shock value […] But, speaking from a design perspective, one has to think about the audience – the ‘user’. It’s clear that there exist some very arduous, extremely specific stories that need to be told, that address very specific issues. I understand that. But what we attempt to do is find very human stories, which are not culturally limited. Barcelona is so cosmopolitan in a sense. So, we just want to be able to reach as many people as possible and not have anyone feel left out’.

A preoccupation with the human condition stems from Aileen’s background in Cultural Anthropology. ‘Perhaps it means that [humanities students] find human behaviour particularly interesting. I personally had found it impossible to spend four or five years reading about the array of different cultures on this planet without wanting to get out there and get my hands dirty’. For Aileen, there is no more insightful or cathartic way to explore humanity than theatre. Storytelling is like ‘therapy for the soul’, she adds, ‘because, as writer Robert Greene always says, being a human is messy and unbearable sometimes… it can get so awkward and uncomfortable. When watching a theatre performance, you have the opportunity to normalise and learn about the human experience, through other people's stories, which are actually ours as well’.

‘I genuinely believe everyone should participate in theatre at one point in their lives. It leaves you no choice but to become a more open-minded individual.’

It doesn’t matter where you’re from. ‘Storytelling is a part of the human experience. It comes from our history of being human’. In fact, people underestimate how much creatives know about history and anthropology. Working behind the scenes in theatre and as a designer, ‘you’re working with images, collaborating on the ‘how’ of telling the story. ‘It becomes quite technical’, she explains. ‘And then [in theatre] you’ve got to read, a lot… It's ideal to have a grasp on various theatrical traditions and movements and genres… knowledge of art and art history is also extremely useful… knowledge of influential directors, playwrights, and performance theories, along with an understanding of basic human psychology also helps immensely… and then some’.

‘The really excellent film directors, actors, theatre writers or directors have just read everything under the sun and have so many incredible references. It can be very intimidating’, Aileen admits. ‘But those are the people you want to be around, you know?’, she exclaims. ‘Because you think to yourself, I am so grateful to be able to learn from someone like you, because you love what you do. And then it becomes a kind of process of osmosis as I get to learn as well in the process, by doing. As if I’m a “sponge”, taking it all in, as the Catalans say’.

Like anything worth doing, theatre involves constantly learning from those around you, especially in an environment where creatives are coming from all over with different backgrounds. This reciprocal learning and collaboration are integral to Blue Book’s approach to production. ‘We do our best to only work with ensemble pieces’, Aileen affirms. She shakes her head, ‘No one's better than anyone else. We really make it clear that we're all in this together. We’re here to make mistakes. We are exploring and we don’t always know what we're doing. Can I be the first to admit that? And that’s part of the learning process. Can’t we just learn this together?’

Rather than having a fixed company, everything is project-based just as in design, ‘in order to give different people different opportunities. There's a distinct flavour every time’. It’s all about passion for the individual production, Aileen tells me. ‘First and foremost, the director must be in love with the play. Because if they’re not in love with the piece, we start off on a bad foot and it can trickle down’. The company also volunteers with the local community, which is mandatory for any current cast or crew member. Projects have involved performing for the local retired community, conducting workshops for children and university students, and working with local actors.

Blue Book thrives off its integration with the spirit of the diverse personalities that shape the city which it calls home. Barcelona ‘attracts very special humans’, Aileen beams. The people from Barcelona, they have a great sense of humour. Even though it’s a large city, they really believe in their relationships; they appreciate and take time for them’. When Aileen talks about the actors in the group, she is radiant; you can sense the depth of her pride. ‘We can only hope they [the actors] do the same in each and every project, together’.

Blue Book performed at the Karachi Arts Festival last summer with Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation, a play about the personal evolutions of a group of strangers in a community acting class. Their production of The Motherf**ker with the Hat by Stanley Adly is due to appear in the Barcelona Fringe Festival in October. Tickets for the Dinner Party and their other upcoming play. MacMillan’s Lungs, can be found here.