Festival Z call for applications receives 119 proposals, the year with the highest number of projects submitted

The open call to submit projects to be part of Festival Z has received a total of 119 proposals for the 2025 edition. This is a figure higher than that of all previous editions, a fact that has made this year’s edition the most disputed when it comes to choosing the proposals that will be part of the festival’s program. The call was open from October 30 to December 21, 2024.

Of the 119 proposals submitted, which include all kinds of scenic languages (theater, dance, circus, performance, etc.), 69 applied to Modality 1 (exhibition, designed for finished shows); 30, to Modality 2 (which offers creative residency and public exhibition of the process, for projects in an advanced stage of creation), and 20, to Modality 3 (which serves as a first showcase for embryonic ideas or projects in pre-production phase). This year, as a novelty, and largely as a result of the collaborations established by the festival in recent editions with other projects in the territory, it is worth mentioning the participation of companies from the rest of Spain (16), as well as international companies (5).

During the months of January and February of this year, an independent commission formed by young cultural managers, as well as artists under 30 years of age, has carried out the selection of the proposals that will be part of the 2025 edition in its different modalities. This year, the jury included Rut Girona (performing arts producer), Agnès Jabbour (actress, creator and director of Orientación Colectiva Loli), Alba Latorre (sociologist and actress graduated in gestural theater, promoter of the Festival L’Inevitable), Aleix Lidon Baulida (multidisciplinary circus artist and co-founder of the company Non Sin Tri), Sara Manubens (choreographer and transvestite, also linked to educational and mediation projects), Berta Sayeras (cultural worker, creator, teacher and producer, linked to Escenaris Especials).

The commission stresses that the choice of projects has been «very difficult», in the words of Sayeras, due to the high quality of the proposals. It is in relation to this duality that Girona speaks of the selection process as «a risky moment, but also a very nice one». Lidon underlines the good harmony in which the jury has worked: «when the group is in harmony, it is always easier to reach a consensus», she says. Likewise, she assures that «the values of the festival have been present at all times and we have been very careful to defend them». Latorre emphasizes that the six have constituted a «diverse» jury, where «it has been possible to approach the selection from the experience of each person», while Sayeras believes that this diversity «will be reflected» in the programming of this edition, which will be announced next May.