La Ventura
La Ventura is a performing arts collective founded at the Institut del Teatre in 2024. More than a conventional company, it is a meeting space for artists who promote projects and collaborations with the aim of creating and sharing committed performances shaped by a critical and contemporary view of the world around them.
Its members focus their research on the creation of innovative stage codes, capable of questioning themes and dramaturgies of current relevance through the exploration of new languages and forms of representation. Their work is rooted in a specific cultural context and in a desire to engage with the world around them, making the Catalan language a living and central element of their artistic practice. In the case of this particular piece, the creation has been developed by Guillem Sánchez Garcia, Maria Oliver and Enric Verdaguer.
Dimonis
Residence August 2026
At El Canal, they present Dimonis, a hybrid experience halfway between ritual, gathering and shared celebration. An actress, a playwright and a musician invite the audience around a table to explore an essential question: what is the power of language to say what cannot be said?
Starting from the exorcism writings of Jacint Verdaguer, the piece traces a journey through the Catalan literary tradition —from Llull and Maragall to Rodoreda, Palau i Fabre and Laia Llobera— in order to delve into its mystical, mysterious and dissident dimension. It is not a tribute, but a jolt: an invitation to reread these authors through the body, darkness and shared experience.
The performance combines spoken word, live music and audience participation within an open structure that may unfold into conversation, reading or celebration around food. More than a performance, it is a collective experience that turns the spectator into an active part of a journey connecting tradition and contemporaneity.
The residency at El Canal comes after a year and a half of work on an initial embryo of the project, focused mainly on research and documentation, and after sharing a small work-in-progress in different venues across Catalonia. During the residency, the collective will use this time to expand the proposal and develop it as it had been imagined from the start, involving more agents both on and off stage.
Through a process focused on dramaturgy and scenography, La Ventura aims to delve even deeper into the mystical dimension of Catalan literary tradition, through stage codes that combine word, music and action, with the goal of giving Dimonis an even greater coherence with their artistic vision.
Dimonis is one of the 3 projects selected within El Canal’s Programa Emergents – Impuls Escènic, developed in collaboration with Festival Z, a support framework for emerging projects that provides co-production, artistic and technical residencies, and artistic, technical and production mentoring, with the aim of strengthening each project’s professional trajectory and visibility.
