Las Huellas de La Barraca (The Footsteps of La Barraca) recalls the premiere in 1932 of a production of Calderón de la Barca's Life is a Dream in the cloister of San Bernardo in Madrid, by Federico García Lorca and the actors of his La Barraca university drama group. In this sixth edition the now traditional programme of performances in towns, prisons and festivals throughout Spain went hand-in-hand with a summer course and an exhibition which travelled nationwide.
The six amateur theatre groups (two from Latin America - Colombia and Chile - and four from Spain - Murcia, Valencia and Madrid) involved this year in the initiative were selected from the 30 projects entered in the competition organized by AC/E. A jury made up of Concha Busto (producer), Alex Pastor (director of the Festival de Olite), María José Goyanes (actress), Itziar Pascual (author), Juan Ignacio García Garzón (critic), Antonio Tordera (university professor) and Guillermo Heras (director of Iberescena) selected six works presented by theatre companies belonging to the Universities of Valle (Colombia), Valencia, the Universidad Católica de Santiago de Chile (Chile) and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, alongside the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático de Madrid drama school. Those selected also include the Universidad de Murcia's Aula de Teatro group, with a performance which marks the first inclusion of a puppet performance in Las Huellas de La Barraca.
The works The Eclogue of Placida and Victoriano, by Juan del Encina; The Knight of Olmedo, by Lope de Vega; The Young Trickster, based on Tirso de Molina's The Trickster of Seville; The Marvellous Reredos of European Marvels, inspired by Cervantes' one-act comedy The Reredos of Marvels; The Turrets of Toro, by Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca's Life is a Dream, were performed, divided into six routes, during July and August in more than 150 towns in 13 Spanish regions (Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Cantabria, Castile-La Mancha, Castile and Leon, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja, Madrid, Navarre, the Basque Country and Valencia).
These performances were supplemented by the inclusion of some of these works in nine theatre festivals (Almagro, Olite, Olmedo, Ribadavia, Pedroches, Carmona and Baeza) along with the Villanueva de la Serena Street Theatre Festival and the Santander International Festival. Las Huellas de La Barraca 2011 likewise visited 15 prisons and detention centres in 8 Spanish regions (Galicia, Aragon, Madrid, Castile-Leon, Castile-La Mancha, Valencia, Andalusia and La Rioja), through a partnership agreement with the Spanish Ministry of Internal Affaires’ Secretariat-General for Penitentiary Institutions.
Route 1. The Knight of Olmedo. Universidad de Murcia
Route 2. The Young Trickster. Universidad Católica de Santiago de Chile
Route 3. The Eclogue of Placida and Victoriano. Universidad del Valle de Colombia
Route 4. The Turrets of Toro. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Route 5. Spain is a Dream. RESAD
Route 6. The Marvellous Reredos of European Marvels. Universidad de Valencia
