Last year, 2024, marked thirty years since Xavier Albertí began directing Lluïsa Cunillé’s plays.  Since then, they have collaborated on twenty-seven productions. Now, they’re embarking on their twenty-eighth. Such a longstanding collaboration between a playwright and a director is rare. Compto cada passa meva sobre la terra [I Count Every Step I Take on the Earth] is one of Lluïsa Cunillé’s most recent works, specifically created to be performed by Oriol Genís. In this production, we follow the protagonist on the night before he is to have a risky heart surgery. This pivotal moment allows us to delve into the inner world of a man who has spent his entire life working as a newspaper seller at a kiosk near a convention centre in a small seaside town. The newspaper seller’s confessions to his chance hospital roommate reveal the turmoil of a soul slowly unravelling the darker aspects of an apparently unremarkable life that turns out to be filled with hidden shadows that any audience member can relate to. “Lluïsa remains true to an approach to theatre that lays bare the souls of characters who are aware of the powerful forces in the world threatening their existence, freedom, or independence,” says Xavier Albertí. “Fear, tenderness, and guilt come across in expressions that reflect a desire to understand and accept a life that doesn’t know whether it will awaken from anaesthesia the next day”.

Born in Badalona in 1961, Lluïsa Cunillé trained at Sala Beckett in the 1990s under José Sanchis Sinisterra and in 2005, she won the City of Barcelona award for her play Barcelona, mapa d’ombres [translated into English as Barcelona, Map of Shadows]. Two years later she won the National Culture Award in theatre for La cantant calba al McDonald’s [The Bald Singer at McDonald’s], the same year she published Après moi, le déluge. She participated in the Grec 1994 festival with Libración [translated into English as Libration], Grec 1997 with La venda [translated into English as The Sale], Grec 1999 with La cita [translated into English as The Meeting], Grec 2015 with Franklin Street, and Grec 2024 with L’últim dia [The Last Day], one of the many Cunillé works that Xavier Albertí has directed. Albertí, a member of the La Reina de la Nit company alongside Cunillé, not only directed the Grec Festival from 1996 to 1999, but has also directed or written numerous productions for the festival, including his adaptation of La Traviata (at the now-defunct Artenbrut venue), L’últim dia [The Last Day], and Alberto Conejero’s En mitad de tanto fuego [Amidst So Much Fire] (Grec 2023). Now, he directs Oriol Genís, an actor and founder of several theatre companies, who has worked with notable figures in the theatre world, including Xavier Albertí, Jordi Prat i Coll, Alicia Gorina, Carlota Subirós, Joan Ollé, Esther Nadal, Marc Rosich, Mario Gas, and Manel Dueso. He was part of the La Reina de la Nit company with Albertí and Cunillé, and the Projecte T6 at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. 

A co-production by Teorema Teatre, Barcelona Grec Festival, and Lloret de Mar City Council.

With the support of OSIC and Badalona Cultura.