Fàtima

A play by Jordi Prat i Coll on the mysteries of the brain, the wonder of memories, meanness, innocence and loneliness, set in Barcelona's Raval district.

What's inside our brain? What impenetrable mysteries does it hide? How does someone else's brain work, and what moral or ideological rules govern how it works? That is the question the playwright Jordi Prat i Coll asks in this play about a girl who starts out on a path of no return - a character as capable of experiencing a specific idea of a miracle as she is of entering the mean streets of our era without leaving Barcelona's Ciutat Vella neighbourhood. The streets of the Raval neighbourhood are the backdrop for a reflection on our world's innocence and vanity, in which there is no shortage of poetry or dreamlike situations. A cat, a seagull, a woman watching a film or trying to, a dealer, a man with an unusual gait... They are all characters in a text that is constructed in short sentences, as if they were shot at an audience facing a raw and violent reality which tells us about the fragile and incomprehensible nature of human beings.

A co-production with the Grec 2022 Festival de Barcelona. Play published in collaboration with Arola Editors.

As a director and playwright, Jordi Prat i Coll has received the Barcelona Theatre Prize for Best Musical 2017 for Requiem for Evita and the 2021 Critics Award for script and small format show for M'hauríeu de pagar, among other awards. On the stages at the Lliure, we have seen his plays De quan somiava (2013), Una còpia (2007) and Eva Perón (2004).

WHAT THE PRESS SAID

"Queralt Casasayas is a magnificent Fàtima that evokes the loss of oneself, the fragility of unconsciousness, the bitter virulence of vital disenchantment. It is accompanied by a cast very well directed by the author, Jordi Prat i Coll (Els Jocs Florals de Canprosa, M'hauríeu de pagar), in which stands out, of course, Mercè Aránega in an almost comedy role; Jordi Figueras, spectacular as a wanderer who loves the sunrise, and Sergi Torrecilla as the camel and culé of pure strain. [...] A good show."
Ara – Santi Fondevila

"Jordi Prat i Coll professes a love disallowed by the language and improper records -'Prendré la follia per companyia i seré lliure', says a Fatima dedicated to drugs and prostitution-, because it is clear that his is not a realistic bet. The work, dark and poetic, shows the infernal journey of Fatima, as well as the strategies of survival and compensation that appropriates his brain on this road of perdition. And there is no redemption, as the woman from the Film Library says-alluding to the end of a film. Or maybe so. Already worn, better to get high with pills of biblical name. Vanity of vanities, useless cares. From the top of the staircase, the dispossessed look upon the oppressive wickedness of the world and judge us."
Núvol - Ana Prieto Nadal

"It is undoubtedly the most ambitious text of the playwright and director. After the excellent M'hauríeu de pagar, it seems as if many of the cotilles of contemporary Catalan theatre in the verbal sphere have been taken off. [...] Fàtima stands because Prat i Coll has built a very good story. Fiction, this time. And I tell you, we don’t have enough. No clichés, no bickering, no worrying about political correctness, no giving up poetry."
El Temps de les arts - Andreu Gomila