THE NEW STAGES by Gabriel Olivares
March 8, 2026 9:15 am
There are moments when one feels that theatre is not just a place where performances happen, but a living organism that breathes with the time it inhabits.
These have not been quiet months. They have been months of thinking a lot, writing a lot and trying many things. And for me, that is always a good sign. When theatre feels too clear, too tidy or too comfortable, it usually means that something has stopped moving. And theatre, like life, only works when it is in motion.
At TeatroLAB we have been working for some time with an idea that is becoming clearer to me every day: training is the foundation that keeps a company alive. Companies are not sustained only by premieres. They are sustained by training, by research and by the feeling that something is always in process.
That is why in recent months we have been refining something that had been on my mind for quite a while and that now begins to take shape more clearly: the ecosystem of TeatroLAB Madrid.
Three spaces that feed one another.
Training.
The laboratory.
The company.
Training is the place where actors keep the muscle alive. Where listening, the body and the imagination are trained. Where one reminds oneself why one started doing theatre in the first place.
The laboratory is a completely different place. It is the place where error is allowed. Where materials are tested, scenes are built and ideas are dismantled. Where a performance does not yet exist… but begins to breathe.
And then there is the company. Which is not a physical place. It is a professional state. It is the moment when an actor or performing artist enters a repertory and begins to share the stage with a real audience, in real theatres, with performances that must sustain themselves night after night.
During these months we have been organizing this system with more clarity than ever.
Probably because the moment demands it.
We live in a curious time. A time when everything seems accelerated, fragmented and sometimes a little hysterical. Culture is like that too. Everything seems to require an immediate premiere, an immediate reaction, immediate visibility.
And theatre, paradoxically, needs exactly the opposite.
It needs time.
Time to make mistakes.
Time to rehearse.
Time for a group of actors to truly become a group.
Perhaps that is why the repertory model interests me more and more. The idea that a group of performers can move through different productions, different languages and different authors… while maintaining something in common: a shared training and a shared perspective on the stage.
During this period we have also been writing a lot. Some plays are already quite advanced. Others are still in a wild state.
Some texts are born directly from the laboratory. Others come from longer writing processes. Some are closely connected to comedy, while others move closer to drama or even to somewhat stranger territories.
But they all share one thing: they are born for the stage. I have always been more interested in theatre written with the bodies that will inhabit it in mind than in theatre written only for the page.
At the same time, we have also been working a lot on something that might seem smaller but is actually enormous: structure.
How productions are made.
How they are rehearsed.
How they are financed.
How they are sustained over time.
Because one of the great questions of contemporary theatre is not only what stories we tell. It is also how we make it possible for them to exist.
From this question also emerges the new stage of TeatroLAB that we are now beginning to put into motion.
A very simple and very ambitious idea at the same time: to create a constant flow of original productions that can coexist in repertory over the coming years.
Not a one-off project, but something closer to a continuous creative engine. A system where more commercial productions, more experimental formats and also ambitious ensemble-driven pieces born directly from the laboratory can coexist.
Something that resembles an ecosystem more than the usual model of isolated productions.
I do not know exactly how far all this will go. But I do know one thing: theatre needs structures that allow creation to continue over time. And in Spain that is still quite rare.
Perhaps that is why at TeatroLAB we are so interested in the combination of training, research and production. Not as three separate things, but as parts of the same process.
As I write this, I realize that in the end all this movement is connected to a very old question:
What does it mean today to belong to a theatre company?
I believe that in these months we have taken some important steps in that direction. Many more remain.
Theatre is always beginning.
And perhaps that is what I like most about it.
Gabriel Olivares
Artistic Director of TeatroLAB Madrid
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