The Formentera Council Office of Culture and Festivities presents Hilos, a stage production for audiences seven and up. The show, which hits Formentera's cinema, la Sala de Cultura, this Saturday, November 11, at 9.00pm, runs sixty minutes. Admission is five euros for adults and three euros for youth under 25. Tickets will be available at the cinema box office the day of the event.

Included in the programme of the Formentera Council-backed Illa a Escena, the production is also part of PLATEA, an effort to spotlight first-class national acts set in motion by INAEM (the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport's institute of performing arts and music).

Hilos explores motherly love by riffing on the love between a mother and her newborn. We enter the world bound by an umbilical cord which, though cut at the moment of birth, remains a live wire, tethering the two parts much like an invisible string. The sublime acting of Rosa Díaz is charged with feeling and earned her the FETEN's best female actor prize in 2016.

The troupe
La Rous theatre group was founded in 2008 by Rosa Díaz, actress, director and dramaturge since 1984. Artistic residences abroad exposed her to diverse fields of study and new modes of working, and she gave courses in directing, acting and voice.

World-class prizes like the 2009 FETEN youth theatre festival's award for best production; the 2011 national children and youth theatre award for artistic quality, coherence and originality; awards for best female acting, best stage design, best original score at FETEN 2014 speak to her talent. Now, before Formentera audiences, she presents Hilos, winner of prizes in dramaturgy and acting by a female.

The Formentera Council Office of Culture wishes to announce details of a performance this weekend by local dance troupe Es Pastorells, where they will share a popular island culture with crowds on Menorca.

The company is shipping out for a Saturday demonstration of ball pagès (country dance) in a Ciutadella theatre. Members of folk group Tramuntana have been enlisted to show visiting Es Pastorells dancers the island and some of its customs. The troupe from Menorca will return the favour with a springtime visit to our island.

In an effort to spread culture within the Balearic region, the Formentera Council financed Es Pastorells' travel costs for the engagement, which came to €2,216.

The Formentera Council wishes to announce that, due to scheduled upgrades, film showings this Friday (November 3) and Sunday (November 5) at the island's cinema have been cancelled.

The Sala de Cultura (literally, “hall of culture”) will remain closed October 31 to November 10, during which time crews, in addition to performing repairs of the stage, puttying and repainting of inside walls and maintenance of outdoor wooden structures, will apply a material to prevent slips on floors, replace a wooden door, switch out indoor lighting and repair the lighting for the cinema's outdoor sign.

The cost of upgrades is €10,591 (VAT included), though some work, such as on lighting, will be overseen by Council work crews.

Education and culture secretary Susana Labrador offered apologies for any inconveniences caused by the closure. She described the upgrades part of a promise made by the administration's senior councillors and the PSOE to “equip the cinema for current needs and improve the quality of life for those island residents that use it”.

More improvements
In recent months other upgrades have also sought to achieve the same. Single-pane glass in the cinema's windows was replaced with double-paned equivalents in an effort to better the building's insulation. The price tag for those improvements was €480, VAT included. For security reasons, a wooden door on the side of the cinema was upgraded with an aluminium replacement, an operation which cost €740 (VAT included). Crews also coated the projection room door with sheet metal and repaired a side emergency exit door.

Lastly, the cinema received a new air-conditioning unit, which cost €15,173 (VAT included).

The Formentera Council's Office of Culture and Festivities presents “Vola Ploma,” a puppet show for children four and up that department head Susana Labrador described as “an international headline grabber ready to take Formentera's youngsters along for the ride”.

The 50-minute show will open on Formentera this Saturday, October 28, at 5.30pm in the municipal cinema (Sala de Cultura). Admission is three euros and tickets can be purchased the day of the show at the box office. The act is part of the island's Illa a Escena performing arts programme that will ultimately bring seven stage productions to Formentera from September to December.

Story
“Vola Ploma” (literally, fly feather in Catalan) is a story about the dream of flying, freedom and being true to ourselves as living things. The three issues will be essential to the main character realising her dream in the course of the show. The audience, for its part, gets to join her in flight.

“Vola Ploma” comes to Formentera as part of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport's PLATEA programme, started in 2014 by the national institute of performing arts and music (INAEM) as a way to bring world-class show's to island audiences.

History
Since 1989, Periferia Teatro has supported research and education about puppet theatre. With a string of productions and national and international festivals under their belts, the theatre group has nabbed a range of accolades. Among them was the Tolosa puppetry festival's award for best production of 2015, for “Vola Ploma”.