Cabanyal Intim, the intimate festival in the old fishing district in Valencia, returns from this Thursday for its eleventh year. Organised by the Francachela Teatro company, it will run over two consecutive weekends and conclude on the 15^th March. This includes the Territori Performance on Saturday 7^th May, a three-hour session from 18:00h to 21:00h that invites the public to form part of an immersive avant-garde experience.

Let’s enter the chaos, shall we?

This year’s theme, ‘chaos’, is reflected in the advertising for the festival this year: upside down houses, benches on fire, and pure nonsensicalness. The website states (translated to English), ‘each edition raises a motto, always in line with our social reality, about which companies create their montages, such as desire, transformation, the future, migration or memory’. If its motto is anything to go by, we can expect that this year’s Cabanyal Intim will be more experimental and eccentric than ever.

The festival is unique in the sense that it is staged inside the houses and other spaces located around Cabanyal. Living rooms, bathrooms, terraces and other domestic spaces are transformed into performance spaces that include a large range of artistic forms – dance, circus, clowns, cabaret, video art, poetry, amongst others. The interaction between the neighbourhood’s history and inhabitants with that of its performances is at the very core of ‘Cabanyal Intim’, and a key part of its innovation.

The viewership of performances can range from only three or four spectators to around twenty at once. Alongside the free parallel activities that are offered to audiences, this element of intimacy may make spectators feel like a part of the show themselves. Through breaking the boundaries between reality and theatre, the home and the stage, and the spectator and performer, Cabanyal Intim asks us to question whether the themes put forward in the shows are all that distant from the modern day. I think this is one for the diaries…

Report by Anusha Vasudeva

 Article copyright 24/7 Valencia

For further information, visit Cabanyal Intim’s website: http://cabanyalintim.com

Season Tickets

Fem Cabanyal: 5 short / family pieces for €25

Chaotic: 3 short / familiar pieces and 2 long pieces for €30

(Short and long pieces can be viewed on the website)

The timings and locations of performances can also be viewed on the website.