The artistic director of La Perla 29 has always lived surrounded by libraries. The Library of Catalonia has provided him with stage space since 2006. And in the warehouse, disassembled, his grandmother’s large corner shelf – ‘l’àvia Rull’ – awaits a place. It’s beautiful, huge, made of wood, but it doesn’t fit in the office on Calle del Carme where the company set up shop four years ago. Here, next to a table built by Oriol Broggi himself with an oak top, there are two customized Ikea Billys: he put a pine support on the one in the background, and for the one facing the balcony, he made some upper modules. He says that the Billys are a great invention, “pretty and useful, they would go unnoticed on stage”.

At home he shares a library with the family. Either for aesthetic reasons or because of the translations, his daughters Violeta, Aran and Clara – of whom there are photos and drawings here and there – are not interested in the books that Broggi read as a child, and that his parents already read. . He had the sensation of beginning to be a reader with The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne. At school, the theater made him “tremble” (“the Mallorcan way”, he specifies), and the first shocking reading he remembers is King Lear. He shares books with her wife Bet hers, and unlike her, he doesn’t usually read before bed. If anything comics, that distract him, French or Belgian BD of clear line. He has all of Lucky Luke, quite a bit of Asterix and Tintin. And also more modern, but neither manga nor Marvel are passionate about it.

It is difficult for him to get hooked on novels, especially since the cell phone has possessed him. In summer he looks out at Maigret. As a young man he read a lot of poetry, “it was a way to quickly conquer the world”. In this sense, he considers Shakespeare the most important author because he brings everything together: literature, philosophy and poetics. He is frustrated by forgetting things that he has read, he puts up post-its, he underlines in pencil, the pen is prohibited.

Books are a source of knowledge, they keep company and, as objects, they become present: “Do you think about what you could stage with the actor Lluís Soler, for example, you look at the library, you see The Tempest, you wonder why not?” . He likes to have them close at hand, touch them, look at them, reposition them. “How to order them is the great debate.” His father has a whole bookshelf dedicated to libraries. In his, the Catalan theater is upstairs with a photo of Salvador Espriu presiding over the office: from Ignasi Iglesias, Josep Maria de Sagarra and Àngel Guimerà, to modern authors and the manuscripts that come to him. Next door is the Spanish theater. Below, the classics, accompanied by studies on each one in order of time. Goldoni has been misplaced; This week Coralina, the loving servant opens, and surely the team has taken her books. There are also works by Ibsen, Chekhov, The Tragedies of Euripides, Sartre, Mamet, Cyrano de Bergerac. English and Irish theater go together. The theory, dictionaries and essays, at the end. “The important thing is to find everything.”

Some have inherited or have been given as gifts. L’avi Rull, businessman and editorial patron, had them very well bound, by Emilio Brugalla or by his disciple Manuel Bueno. The Molière collection bears the Ex-Libris “Paiens on tort et chretiens on droit” and the image of a crusader beating a pagan with a sword. In the Broggi grandparents’ house, the library was also very important. He took books from grandfather Moisès (there are some photos of the famous surgeon in sight) and grandmother Angelina, like those of Valle-Inclán in Austral. Both lived more than a hundred years. His sister’s godfather gave him Teatre de Shakespeare translated by Sagarra (and signed by him). 1935 edition; there are 340 copies. His is number 12, on Velate Guarro paper.

Lately he has bought the works of Tennessee Williams collected by Alba editorial. And in Sant Jordi, La memòria más secreta dels homes, with which Mohamed Mbougar Sarr obtained the Goncourt. Miller loves it, he thinks she hasn’t read it enough. Broggi is more practical than theoretical, for him the artistic predominates. What he likes about theater is the possibility of turning the text into a reality, importing ideas into a way of doing things, making them your own. Or in other words: “More than being or not being, it is about doing or not doing”.