“Free EU Roaming”: Adapting Catalan Referendum Into A Play

Presented at the Smock Alley Theatre for the last edition of the Dublin Fringe Festival, Free EU Roaming is a very interesting performance developed and devised by The Rule of Three, a new collective in performing arts lead by–in alphabetical order–Sinéad Brady, Caroline Galvis, and Katie O’Byrne.

Difficult to define the play. Officially–as stated in the festival website–is a physical theatre play, but the definition is reductive due to a dramaturgy that has also in the words one of is an essential element. The three performers–authors, who come from three different countries (UK, Germany, and Ireland), realized a text and a show charged of their personal experience and the experiences of their own realities, together with the reality of their Country of adoption: Spain, or better said Catalonia and Barcelona, where they met and trained.

The plot in a way is simple: an Irishwoman, an Englishwoman, and a German woman walk into a hostel bar. A hostel bar in Barcelona. They do not know each other but they are there for the same reason: go to a big music festival to see the Daft Punk. Suddenly, a fight for Catalonian independence rages on the streets outside.

It is clear the reference to the 1^st of October 2017 with the referendum–not accepted by Madrid and by almost all the international governments–for the independence of Catalonia. But it is just a beginning, a way for the characters to discuss their own personal realities and define their own identity in relation to the other: what does it mean being a European citizen after Catalan referendum, after Brexit and so on? Is still there a sense of community?

In this way, the title has a double meaning: Free EU Roaming as the roaming and the signal that start to disappear after the declaration of independence; Free EU Roaming as a metaphor of a Europe without borders.

In the performance, it is possible music, movement, monologues, dialogues, strong, and humoristic parts mixed together. The sensation is that The Rule of Three has a great amount of material and different paths to take with this show in order to find a definitive identity. The result is interesting, the political commitment is high, the potential is great.