El Pont Flotant
| Project coaches & artistic directors: | Àlex Cantó, Pau Pons and Jesús Muñoz Muñoz |
| Collaborating artists: | Ana Erdozain, Alba González, Fermín Jiménez and Pedro Aznar Aznar |
| Collaborating psychologist: | Juan Carlos Morcillo |
| Collaborating educator: | Primitivo Sáez |
“If there is anything that characterises El Pont Flotant, it is its capacity to imbue daily life with great emotion.”.El País
Founded in 2000, the company El Pont Flotant has become one of the most praised troupes in the Valencian Community because of its refreshingly original way of interpreting the stage (to them, theatre is closely related to play) and their luminous way of viewing life itself. Far from commercial parameters, their pieces are the outcome of a collective creation process, characterised by a clear desire to seek and reflect on new contemporary theatrical communication and expression methods.
Over the course of their careers, Àlex Cantó, Joan Collado, Jesús Muñoz and Pau Pons, the four colleagues making up El Pont Flotant, have recounted their midlife crises, their fear of growing up and their doubts about paternity with intimate and playful productions that somehow invite audiences to have bigger hearts. They do this while bonding with viewers naturally and closely. In their creations, the actors converse with audiences, suggest that they take part in games, tell them about their joys and yearnings and even invite them to eat paella.
A small portion of Madrid audiences had the chance to discover El Pont Flotant in Como piedras (2008) at Sala Tarambana. Two years later, the company premiered at the Sala Cuarta Pared with Ejercicios de amor (2010), a production with which they also visited the Reina Sofía Museum (2011). Algunas personas buenas (2013) was included in the programming of the last edition of the unfortunately defunct Escena Contemporánea Festival and Yo de mayor quiero ser Fermín Jiménez (2013 y 2014) (2013 and 2014) could be seen during two different seasons at Cuarta Pared and the beloved Kubik Fabrik Theatre. In recent years, their projects Ejercicios de amor (2016) and El hijo que quiero tener (2017) have been presented at the Teatro de La Abadía. The last piece came into being through an intergenerational workshop organised jointly at Las Naves-Espai Mutant that handled the topic of education. For several months, El Pont Flotant worked with children and adults in Valencia to learn about their concerns and desires, to then express them in the performance. The workshop was repeated in each city where the work was performed, with neighbours ending up on the stage.
Following this line of working and forming relationships with local communities, during the 36th Autumn Festival El Pont Flotant proposes a scenic laboratory in which several issues on functional diversity will be confronted. Its purpose is to think—jointly with the audience—about the concept of capacity, about that which incapacitates us and about the differences that bring us together or separate us because of these ‘disabilities’.
The scenic laboratory Otras InCapacidades had three phases prior to the public show that can be seen this November at the Sala Verde of the Teatros del Canal within the framework of the 36th Autumn Festival. Starting in June 2018, the creative process has consisted of the company hosting working and experimentation sessions along with other professionals from different creative fields and with people both with and without previous experience in the performing arts with different capacities.