A creation by El Conde de Torrefiel Text, dramaturgy and direction Tanya Beyeler and Pablo Gisbert
24 APR – 24 MAY 2026 From Tuesday to Sunday at 6.00 pm Post-show talk: 5 MAY 2026 Accessible performances: 14 and 15 MAY SUB+AD+AA
Please arrive well in advance as the auditorium will be closed once the performance has begun.
To collect tickets, our box offices will be open from Monday to Sunday from 2.30 pm to 8.30 pm.
El Conde de Torrefiel
Tanya Beyeler and Pablo Gisbert
Isaac Torres
Mireia Donat Melús
Rebecca Praga
Uriel Ireland
Centro Dramático Nacional, Teatre Lliure and Cielo Drive
About the show
“The human being is a mess of flesh and words” Santiago Alba Rico
LEXIKON begins with a question: What defines us as humans? To answer it, El Conde de Torrefiel offers a metaphor as poetic as it is vital: blood as language. Blood and language are understood as underground currents—constantly shifting, transforming and transfusing—living archives of the complexity of our essence and of time, while also serving as oracles of the future.
LEXIKON unfolds as a symbolic transfusion on stage. Just as blood carries life, oxygen and genetics, language transports ideas, world views and bonds. A piece of theatre where blood, transfusion and the words activate a scenic vision that explores human language as a vital substance—one that connects bodies and forms the political and social body. A relationship of delicate balance, for every transfusion—whether of blood or of words—can heal or poison.
Through a sequence of tableaux vivants and a staging that unfolds and expands its central metaphor, LEXIKON traces fragments of lives and eras in a sensory experience at the crossroads of theatre, choreography and sound art.
Writers’ and directors’ note
What better place than a theatre to reflect on what it means to be human — to speak of words and blood. Since its origins, the theatre has been a site of transfusion — of ideas. To express oneself is a form of bleeding, and this blood on stage speaks, cries out and cuts through the audience, flowing towards them through a channel of transfusion, of communication.
In a highly digitalised world, where time accelerates, memory fails to take root and actions are loaded with amnesia and automatisms, blood — as a metaphor for human communication — invokes mystery, surprise and possibility, far removed from guided algorithms, digital archives and endless scrolling through opinions. Blood is a carrier of information that courses through us, transporting us through our lives, unaware of the messages and enigmas we bear. Language, on the other hand, nourishes the political body, irrigates the world with images and ideas, and shapes how we live in it. Logos connects humans in a system of symbols and orients us within the reality we inhabit. As Aristotle wrote: “It is through conversation that humans can savour the world”.
The stage language of El Conde de Torrefiel is marked by contradiction — the result of a collision, like an accident, where the audience becomes a direct witness, observing, evaluating and interpreting what the scene reveals. This is our lexicon. A vocabulary that is spoken aloud, placing text and image in conflict; that accentuates the contradiction of theatrical elements; that is rich in metaphor and generates its own meaning: a third image, an experience born from the encounter between the work and its audience.
El Conde de Torrefiel
El Conde de Torrefiel
Tanya Beyeler and Pablo Gisbert
Isaac Torres
Mireia Donat Melús
Rebecca Praga
Uriel Ireland
Centro Dramático Nacional, Teatre Lliure and Cielo Drive
(Lugano, Switzerland, 1980) is a performance artist trained in Acting, Humanities, Dramaturgy and Directing. In 2009, she moved to Barcelona, where she began collaborating with the dance company La Veronal and co-founded, alongside Pablo Gisbert, the internationally acclaimed company El Conde de Torrefiel, known for its interdisciplinary approach blending theatre, dance, literature and visual arts.
In 2021, she was awarded the Swiss National Prize for the Performing Arts. She also collaborates occasionally as a dramaturg on dance projects and leads courses and creative seminars.
(Ontinyent, 1982) studied Philosophy, Dramatic Arts, and Directing and Dramaturgy at RESAD in Madrid and at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona, where he graduated in 2011. Playwright for the dance company La Veronal until 2015, Pablo Gisbert established the theatre project El Conde de Torrefiel in 2010 alongside Tanya Beyeler.
His work has received several awards, including the Marqués de Bradomín Prize and the Sebastià Guasch Prize. In 2015, the publishing house La Uña Rota released a collection of his texts written for the company up to that point, under the title Mierda Bonita, which was also published in French by the Paris-based Actualicé Editions.
