What most interests me in theatre – now and ever since I started out – is the encounter, the meeting: the co-existence of a group organised by unknown people in a determined space and time. It is a meeting without long-term objectives, without any future summons: the agenda goes no further than the darkness and the applause. However, nobody knows which of these meetings will unleash the next revolution. Every night at the theatre – I like to think of it like this – configures an ephemeral political movement.
I write comedies because I am not optimistic. I believe in the sense of humour as the only viable alternative to optimism. My plays are always autobiographical, but I never realise that until months after I have written them.
Barcelona, 1987
Joan Yago holds a degree in Directing and Playwriting from the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona. He is the author of the following plays: Entrevistes breus amb dones excepcionals, Fairfly, You say tomato (2016 Serra d’Or Prize), Un Lloc Comú (2014 Ciutat d’Alzira Prize), Bluf (2014 Quim Masó Prize), Sobre el fenomen de les feines de merda, Aneboda, La Nau dels Bojos (2012 Adrià Gual Prize), L’Editto Bulgaro, Martingala, No sóc Dean Moriarty o Feísima enfermedad y muy triste muerte de la reina Isabel I (2010 Escènia Prize). He is a founding member of the La Calòrica company.
Short Interviews with Exceptional Women
Glenna Pfender has blue skin due to an out-of-control addiction to the chemical derivatives of silver. She believes that happiness consists of being in a place and wanting to stay there forever. Ukrainian model Natalia Yaroslavna has modified her body to become a flesh-and-blood Barbie doll. Today she will explain to us that at one time we were gods and, if we wanted to, we could be gods again. Susan Rankin represents the county of Clark at the Nevada Assembly. She dreams of an America where all the boys and girls –independently of their religion or origin– can go to school with a weapon in their rucksack. We have between two-hundred and a thousand years to abandon the planet Earth. We will talk about it with world expert in transhumanist engineering Roberta Flax. Rosie Powell is the youngest transsexual girl in the United Kingdom. She loves to wake up every day in this wonderful world and is absolutely certain that, in the future, people will be better.
Play available in Catalan.
An 8-character play for 1 actor and 3 actresses (each one plays 2 characters).
You Say Tomato
An hour before the doors open of the ruinous multi-purpose venue where they are performing tonight, Santi and Rosó will discover that they don’t like music. They don’t like working in music, they don’t like listening to it. They hate the idea of “being musicians” but they can’t leave it alone either. “Know what the worst thing is about the crisis of being in your forties? That it’s a repeat of the crisis of being in your thirties. You have the same doubts, the same fears… But you’re ten years older.”
Play available in Catalan, Portuguese and Spanish.
Play for 1 actor and 1 actress.
Edition 2017-2020
Journal: Joan Yago on his experience at Teatrul Odeon
On February 28, Teatrul Odeonhosted the stage reading of You say tomatoby Spanish playwright Joan Yago. Below the report he wrote on
gallery: presentation of “Síria: cartografia incompleta”, workshop with Syrian immigrants
This photogallery collects some pictures about the presentation "Síria: cartografia incompleta" on 16th December 2017 at Sala Beckett
