Each new edition of Festival Escena Lanzarote begins with the curiosity of discovering who will be visiting us and what they are bringing. In this sixth edition, more international than ever, we will once again meet artists and stage proposals arriving from very different places, ready to engage with the singularity of our auditoriums at the Centros de Arte, Cultura y Turismo de Lanzarote.

A large part of the meaning of Festival Escena Lanzarote lies in a programme designed specifically for these spaces and for an audience that, after five editions, has already made the festival its own.

Each edition grows out of a selection designed to offer quality productions while, at the same time, building a programme with a voice of its own. I am not interested in bringing works together in isolation. I am interested in the relationship they can build with one another, with the spaces where they are performed and, above all, with the audience that receives them.

This new edition’s proposals come from very different places, cultures and traditions. Some draw on stories we recognise; others revisit inherited languages, arise from personal experience, or explore new possibilities of the body and of movement. We will find memory and identity, imagination and freedom, falls and recoveries, bonds, transformation. And once again we will find artists capable of turning those particular experiences into emotions we can all recognise.

One of the privileges of an international festival is being able to bring together, within a single programme, artists from the Canary Islands alongside national and international companies; creators with well-established careers alongside new voices who are opening up other paths for the performing arts. That coexistence lets us move from one language to another, discover what we do not yet know, and look differently at what we thought we already knew.

The body, the poetics of movement and music once again take on an essential role. These are languages that cross borders and allow a performance to be shared between residents and visitors without language determining the experience. The relationship between culture and tourism is also part of the festival. From my work as a cultural manager and stage artist, I stand by the power of art and culture to offer other ways of knowing and experiencing a place.

And there is Lanzarote, part of the UNESCO Global Geopark. Programming Festival Escena Lanzarote also means thinking about where each piece of stage work will meet its audience. The auditoriums at Jameos del Agua and Cueva de los Verdes are not neutral stages. The volcanic rock, the silence, the closeness of the artists, the architecture and the landscape all shape the way we look and listen. That is why I look for proposals capable of engaging with these places and taking on another meaning within them. That encounter between performance, space and audience multiplies the spectator’s experience and is also one of this festival’s distinctive features.

After five editions, Festival Escena Lanzarote has built an identity and an ever closer relationship with its audience. Maintaining it demands continuity, care and artistic rigour. But this journey would not have been possible without the work of the entire management, production and technical staff of the Centros de Arte, Cultura y Turismo de Lanzarote, whom I want to thank in particular for making it possible, edition after edition, for every imagined proposal to end up becoming a reality on our stages.

The best way to champion this festival is to make sure that those who come to it feel close to it — that a single ticket can mean discovering an artist, being moved by an unexpected way of understanding the stage, or experiencing anew those extraordinary spaces that are part of our island.

Thank you for joining us for another edition.

In a few minutes the lights will go down and the performance will begin. From that moment on, the stage will belong to the artists and to each of the people who share that moment with them.

Welcome to the sixth edition of Festival Escena Lanzarote.

Quino Falero

Artistic Director and Programmer of
Festival Escena Lanzarote