Mariona Masgrau (1949-2007) was closely related to Tolosa’s puppets festival, initially as a member of the company La Fanfarra and on her own afterwards. Thus, she was our guest on several occasions, the first of these in 1987, at the very beginning of her career, with the show La reina blanca. She was last among us in 2002 with the theatre play De tanto que te quiero. It was due to her role in the puppet world, at a national and international level, that Titirijai continually committed itself to her work.

Toni Rumbau, founder of La Fanfarra with Mariona, says that “it is difficult to define her work”, but underscores several adjectives that help us envision it: “brave, rude, sincere, autonomous, authentic, essential, noble and cheeky”. About the artist herself, Rumbau remembers her as “a woman of very defined empathies, who would not mince her words when it came to speaking the truth. This brought her friends and enemies alike, which she had to struggle with on the shifting sands that are our emotions”. For him, Mariona’s work “has transcended the limits of the ephemeral, to which sadly most theatre plays are condemned”.

An exceptional creator

Although her career began in Portugal, the time she was forced to spend in Denmark as a political refugee (1973-75) was the real turning point for her. It was from this hard experience that her puppeteer vocation was born, which took a more definite form in Barcelona in 1976 when she set the foundations for the creation of La Fanfarra together with Eugenio Navarro and Toni Rumbau.

Working both in the workshop and on stage, she is the author of all of the puppets that feature in the company’s first shows. Works like Malic en Babilonia, La Historia del Rey Triste, La Fuente de la Eterna Juventud, Los Pastorcillos, or La Leyenda de San Jorge, all belong to this time.

In the year 1984, La Fanfarra opened the doors of Teatre Malic, a pioneering space in Barcelona’s alternative scene, in whose management Mariona helps. It is at this time that the company begins to get closer to international festivals.

1995 marks the year when Mariona began her solo career. This time gave birth to extremely original shows centred around the figure of the woman, produced in collaboration with authors like Ana María Moix, Joan Casas and Rafael Metlikovec. Among these we could mention works such as Mangalena, Constantina, Sophia, La Capsa de Joguines, De tanto que te quiero y El Despertar de las Pasiones.

After the Teatre Malic was closed down in 2002, Mariona set off on a new adventure with the opening of Espai Fènix, a theatre-workshop project that was suddenly brought to an end by her death in 2007.