Urban Ruptures as Pre-Existing Potentials of Theatre: The Arnau Project

Abstract

In this article, we will start from the axiom that, as a place of confluence of opposing forces, the city provides the conditions for various ruptures to manifest as urban circumstances and as structuring and destructuring elements, both in human potential and in the geographical and tangible space. We will see how the Arnau Project, the result of citizen initiatives and the support of the municipal authorities, tries to confront these urban pathologies. On the one hand, on an intangible level, in the role of an actor working to come up with viable solutions to the discomfort generated by these ruptures. On the other, as a revitalising agent of an abandoned space: the Teatre Arnau. An additional aim is to redefine this space and re-examine the relationship established between the theatre and its users, to support some unusual theatrical administrative models in the current landscape of cultural management and to foster the creation of new dramaturgical potentials. Our approach, from a theatrological point of view, studies the theatrical phenomenon as a whole in its diversity of aspects that can vary between the architectural, artistic, political, social, cultural, and so on, making use of primary and secondary sources.