Surge festival brings strand of Catalonian street theatre to Glasgow
Catalonian street theatre companies Kamchatcka and Fadunito take part in SURGE 2013
This year’s SURGE festival brings an exciting strand of Catalonian street theatre to Glasgow. Over the last weekend of July, five shows by acclaimed Catalan theatre groups will make their way through the Merchant City. One of them is Kamchatka, in which a group of migrants respond to the new world around them.
‘Kamchatka is a show I’ve wanted to bring here since 2010,’ says Alan Richardson, director at SURGE creators Conflux. ‘It’s one of the best street theatre shows in Europe, they’re incredibly skilled walkabout street performers. The whole show is improvised but it’s always very good.’
Acclaimed Fadunito also present slapstick comedy The Grand Family; Ceci 3.0, which questions attitudes towards disability by inviting onlookers to sit in a remote-controlled wheelchair; and Externet, an installation about communication devised with community volunteers. Together with a new show from The Wandering Orquestra, Richardson hopes SURGE’s Catalonian programme will help introduce high quality street theatre to modern audiences and theatre-makers in Scotland.
‘Kamchatka and Ceci have an underlying political statement that’s not rammed down your throat,’ he explains, ‘and The Grand Family and The Wandering Orquestra are just funny. That wide variety of work is good for both audiences and performers to see that street theatre isn’t just people juggling on unicycles.’
Merchant City, Glasgow, Sat 27–Sun 28 Jul