“The culture sector has been left helpless”

When every­thing closed down, on March 14, Joan Negrié was in Mo­rocco. The actor, who is the man­ager of Sala Trono in Tar­rag­ona, needed a break: “It had been a very hard year for me, with a lot of stress and a lot of work. I went to Mo­rocco for a week and I was con­fined there. We had to come back a week later. And it was very hard to go home and have to be con­fined. It was a re­ally sur­real and very de­press­ing sit­u­a­tion“, he ex­plains. But he did not want to let dis­cour­age­ment in: “From that mo­ment on, I had a change of mind­set, and thought we mustn’t let our­selves sink. I told my col­leagues that we had to work on fu­ture pro­jects, in the hope that one day every­thing will re­turn to nor­mal. “

So they started or­gan­is­ing the Tar­rag­ona In­ter­na­tional The­atre Fes­ti­val (FITT). The sev­enth edi­tion was to be held at the end of June, but the cir­cum­stances marked by Covid forced it to be post­poned and it ended up being held from Sep­tem­ber 2-5. They were work­ing hard with­out know­ing if it would be held or not: “I was very con­vinced that we had to do it; I had this en­thu­si­asm and drive to work on a daily basis. The FITT had to be done any­way, de­spite all the re­stric­tions we had, Tar­rag­ona had to have a the­atre fes­ti­val. As a com­pany, this was the goal we set for our­selves”, Negrié ex­plains. They achieved their goal and, in spite of every­thing, the Sep­tem­ber edi­tion of FITT “was a suc­cess”: “We man­aged to have our best ever fes­ti­val”.

In the mean­time, Sala Trono, which is a small-for­mat venue that fo­cuses on in­de­pen­dent and con­tem­po­rary the­atre, had to be closed for three months (March, April and May): “We lost the Trono sea­son and as there was this col­lec­tive dis­cour­age­ment and frus­tra­tion, I told the team that we had to work with en­thu­si­asm to pre­pare a fes­ti­val and a new sea­son“. The work will not be in vain: “the works that we have not been able to pre­sent this year will be sched­uled for the next sea­son”.

It has not been easy to com­ply with all the mea­sures re­quired to allow the pub­lic into the the­atres: “It has been very hard and very ex­pen­sive, with a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nomic in­vest­ment. But we don’t want this to lead to an­other cri­sis; if we have to enter the the­atre with a mask, then we will; if we have to take our tem­per­a­ture, then so be it... But it was hard and sad. And more so in a the­atre, which is a place of free­dom of ex­pres­sion; wear­ing a mask on your mouth is con­tra­dic­tory, but if we have to do it like this, then we will”.

As a mem­ber of the cul­ture sec­tor, he is used to being treated badly. The pan­demic has only made this tougher: “We have al­ways felt mis­treated, but now it has be­come clear more than ever that cul­ture is not pro­tected enough. We were re­ally left help­less. It was the time where we saw our­selves most naked.”

Negrié also notes that the pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion the sec­tor is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing has be­come more than ev­i­dent: “In all the meet­ings with the gov­ern­ment, we put the fig­ures on the table, they have seen the pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion in which we find our­selves; they have seen our mis­ery, and they can­not allow us to con­tinue in this way“, ex­plains the cul­tural man­ager and actor.

De­spite all this, he does not want to aban­don his op­ti­mism: “From this point on, many things and many ways of work­ing will change. I want to be­lieve that so­ci­ety will make a qual­i­ta­tive step for­ward. Peo­ple are in­creas­ingly dis­ap­pointed, but I have seen col­lec­tive sol­i­dar­ity, at the FITT fes­ti­val, for ex­am­ple. Every­one was very re­spect­ful, gen­er­ous, sup­port­ive, and I think that makes us stronger in the face of an ad­verse sit­u­a­tion.“ And he says: “There are a lot of peo­ple who have had a very bad time of it, and it is we our­selves, so­ci­ety, who have to help make this bet­ter; politi­cians aren’t doing it, it’s we who have to go shop­ping at the neigh­bour­hood store, not Ama­zon, and it’s we who have to go to a small the­atre. If we don’t, the politi­cians will not fill our the­atres, cin­e­mas or mu­se­ums.”

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