Stage Director
Carlus Padrissa was born in Barcelona. Aries. Self taught and ambidextrous. Founding member of the theatre group La Fura dels Baus, established in 1979. Has taken part in productions of Accions (1984), Suz/o/Suz (1985), Tier Mon (1988) and Noun (1990), together with Miki Espuma being responsible for the musical accompaniment and recording.
Together with the company La Fura dels Baus he has toured to four of the world’s continents. In 1992, together with Alex Ollé he directed a production of Mar Mediterrani, mar Olímpic to
music by Ryuichi Sakamoto. This was performed in 1992 at the opening
ceremony of the Barcelona Olympic Games, seen by a TV audience of over
five hundred million viewers. The next year, he single-handedly
directed the macro-production L’Enderroc (1993), involving the use of several excavators, the Belvitge Brass Orchestra and the Jordi Arcarons bikers.
He initiated and has been Artistic Director of the productions MTM (1994) and BOM EXPERIENCES (1994–1995).
At the showing of these productions, innovative technology was used for
the very first time – each of the productions was performed at exactly
the same time in different places and each was connected to the other
by a video link. Following the experience, Carlus Padrissa published a
manifesto.
He has also collaborated with Pep Gatell and Jürgen Müller on TV’s Work in Progress (1995-1997). Together with Alex Ollé, sculptor Jaume Plensa and video director Franc Aleu he staged productions of Atlàntida (Granada, 1996), The Martyrdom of St Sebastian (Rome, 1997), La Damnation de Faust (Salzburg, 1999), Die Zauberflöte (Bochum, 2003), The Diary of One Who Disappeared and Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (Paris, 2007).
Together with Alex Ollé and designer Roland Olbeter, he worked on productions of Faust 3.0 (1998) and XXX (2002). Together with Sergi Jordà, he created the FMOL musical instrument (1998); With Hansel Cerezo, he directed the macro-production L’home del mil•lenni (1999)
in which a gigantic androgynous being made out of one thousand people
and thirty-three thousand internet users opened its arms to welcome the
new millennium. Together with Isidro Ortiz and Alex Ollé he worked on
the film Faust 5.0 (2001), which received an award as best
European science fiction film. He has created stage costumes with
fashion designers including Issey Miyake, Christian Dior and Jean-Paul
Gaultier. He has staged a production of La navaja en el ojo for the grand opening ceremony of the Valencia Biennale, dedicated to connections between various art disciplines.
He has directed the premiere of the opera Don Quijote en Barcelona
together with architects Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliague, cinema
director Emnanuel Carlier, costume designer Chu Uroz and co-director
Alex Ollé, as well as the premiere of the opera Bajo los acantilados de mármol, together with director Valentina Carrasco.
Currently he directs the artistic activities of The Naumon Ship –
an old cargo ship sixty metres long weighing one thousand one hundred
tonnes which has been transformed into a cruising contemporary cultural
centre. The ship is a moving venue for art and cultural exchange, and
its main wine cellar provided the inspiration for the stage direction
of Wagner’s tetralogy, a co-production of the Palau de les Arts Reina
Sofía in Valencia and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. In 2008
together with Pere Pinyol he staged a production marking two centuries
since the execution of the Madrid patriots by soldiers of the
Napoleonic army on 2 May 1808. Together with Roland Olbeter and Franc
Aleu he has directed a production of Stockhausen’s opera Michaels Reise um die Welt (2008), which was premiered in Vienna and later staged in Cologne, Venice, Dresden and Paris.