Calixto Bieito Calixto Bieito
Artistic Director

«I like to think that theatre, music and dance resemble a dream. A dream full of meaning and authenticity. We in Arriaga Theatre want to share, with the whole city and all who wish to join us, a passionate gaze at everyday reality and the world that surrounds us. We want to stimulate the public’s curiosity.

Because theatre is where a community comes together to share ideas, emotions, and a unique experience. The performing arts may not provide new certainties, but what is certain is that they nourish new concerns. A public theatre has the obligation to offer us something we still don’t know whether we like, to take us to places we didn’t know we wanted to see, and of course, to jolt us, open our minds, make us more tolerant and above all make us feel better as people.

Theatre, music, any live show, in short, has much to do with life in the streets, with life, with the everyday life of each person. Out on the streets we don’t know what is going to happen. Yes, we often repeat routines and we know where we are headed and who we are going to see, just like we know we are going to a show by a certain artist or group…but we don’t really know what we are going to experience and what we are going to feel. That’s the magic of life, and that is the magic of Arriaga Theatre. That’s why we come to you, to invite you to feel, to be moved, to laugh, cry, applaud and even to be disapponted. Why not? Isn’t that what life is all about? That’s what theatre is: life.

And Arriaga Theatre is precisely that, a living, dynamic and active theatre, not only through its programme but also in its own productions. This is where we humbly want to make a difference, promoting the local scene through complicity with the artists of Bilbao, Biscay and the Basque Country; positioning Arriaga Theatre among the great spaces of artistic creation both in Spain and worldwide”.

Calixto Bieito
Artistic Director of Arriaga Theatre

PRODUCTIONS DIRECTED BY CALIXTO BIEITO IN ARRIAGA THEATRE

Los esclavos felices (2017)
War Requiem (2017)
Gesualdo! (2017)
Obabakoak (2017)
Johannes Passion (2018)
The string quartet’s guide to sex and anxiety (2018)
Mendi-Mendiyan (2019)
Waiting (2019)
Asier Polo poema visual para un chelo (2020)
Vivaldi, poema para cuerda y dos voces (2020)
Tiempos de cabaret y cambalache (2020)
Gabriel Arestiren etxea defendituko dut (2020)
Oratorio de Navidad (2021)
Erwartung (2021)
ERRESUMA/KINGDOM/REINO (2022)
Luis Mariano (2022)
Orgia (2023)
Die ersten Menschen (2024)

Gallery of performances

«I have no specific purpose. I don’t hold any thesis, nor do I tell the public what to think. Everyone has the right to interpret what they see on stage as they wish. I try to put on stage what I see around me. What moves me, what shocks me. I observe and then I close my eyes…»