We invite you to the biggest event of this year’s A Part Festival, the performance “Gola” (“Gluttony”) by Oriol Pla, winner of the 2025 INTERNATIONAL EMMY AWARDS for Best Actor, the Oscar for best actor in a television series. Pla was the first Spanish actor to receive this award for his leading role in the series “I, Addicted” (available on Disney+), joining an elite group of recipients, alongside such luminaries as Timothy Spall, Martin Freeman, Kenneth Branagh, Dustin Hoffman, and Sean Bean.
Oriol Pla Solina is a Catalan actor and circus performer. He has been performing on stage since the age of six. He is the son of violinist Núria Solina and actor and clown Quimet Pla, founder and director of the renowned Els Comediants theatre, which operates in the field of outdoor theater and new circus. Since childhood, Oriol Pla has combined theater and circus work with performances on both the small and large screens, thus becoming one of the most versatile actors of his generation.
Katowice will host Oriol Pla’s latest production, “Gola” (“Gluttony”), created in collaboration with playwright, musician, and composer Pau Matas Nogué. “Gola” is a work that straddles theater, new circus, and performance art, exploring the theme of insatiability. Pla appears as a clumsy, half-clown, half-jester. To what lengths can this tragicomic character go, determined to please himself and the amused audience at all costs?
The Katowice performance of “Gola” is the only presentation of the play in Poland and the first time both artists have visited our country.
THE CLOWN:
The clown awakens cruel laughter. The kind of laughter that says “I know what you’re doing wrong and you don’t”. It is laughing at the misfortune of others. The clown is the only one capable of making you laugh to keep you from crying. He is stripped down absurdity. The purest and most destructive humanity.
THE JESTER:
If the spectator laughs at the clown, the jester laughs at the spectator. He is Diogenes, the cynicism born from the most scatological truth of life. He is the one who puts the truth in front of everyone, the one that hurts. What nobody wants to say because nobody wants to hear it. He exposes mediocrity and hypocrisy. He rebels joyfully. He is the beast free from fear. His job is to remind the “eternal” King of his inevitable mortality. He illuminates the darkest, most dismal parts with his torch. Or rather, he sets them on fire.
Everything fills me with panic.
More than panic, I feel.
I feel so small.
And gluttony. As much or more gluttony.
Gluttony that makes panic its reason for being.
He doesn’t stop, he doesn’t stop. He wants to savour everything. And he jumps, superficially, over things. Don’t be selfish. What a disgrace. Shut your mouth, your teeth are showing. He became small, small… and now he is an expert at pleasing everyone. Taking advantage of the benefits, of course. A nimble harlequin. Look at him, jumping from here to there, dodging, in this way, stopping for a moment and observing everything around him. He’s happy in the fantasy. He dances because he no longer
remembers who he is. Nobody remembers. Now he’s just trying to get people to look at him. He can do no more. He doesn’t stop, he doesn’t stop. Getting people to look at him, even if offering a poor image, frees him from the torturous tyranny of insignificance.
Oriol Pla & Pau Matas
Concept and Direction: Oriol Pla Solina and Pau Matas Nogué
Collaboration on Dramatic Composition: Jordi Oriol
Assistant Director: Gina Aspa Miralta
Actor: Oriol Pla
Set and Costume Design: Silvia Delagneau
Lighting: Ana Rovira
Musical Composition, Soundscape, and Live Music: Pau Matas
Sound Design: Damien Bazin
Chief Technician: Àngel Puertas
Assistant Set and Costume Designer: Oriol Corral
Artistic Support and Production: Clàudia Flores
Movement Consultant: Guillermo Weickert
Clown Character Creation Consultant: Carolin Obin
Music Consultant: Marc Sastre
Psychological Consultant for Dramatic Development: Berta Clavera
Voice Production: Mariona Castillo
Premiere: November 2024
Duration of the performance: 100 minutes
Performance in English with Polish subtitles.
Production: Temporada Alta and Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, in collaboration with Teatre Sagarra de Santa Coloma de Gramanet
Tickets for the performance HERE.
BACK TO THE FESTIVAL WEBSITE
———————————————————>
