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Pau Zabaleta Llauger is a theater artist, performer, and director working between Europe and New York, creating visualy poetic stage worlds.


pau
zabaleta llauger
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“His work blends visual poetry with dark humor, crafting delicate yet unsettling stage worlds where the fragile, the playful, and the melancholic coexist.”

 















[el] LIVING

created and directed by

Pau Zabaleta Llauger

March
2026
Bank Street Theater
New York

VIDEO [el] LIVING is a visual theater piece that plays with image, movement, objects, and live music to create a fragile story in which dark topics and heavy scenes go hand in hand with humor and visual poetry. Two twin sisters and a man died a long time ago. Now they share a living room, unaware of their own passing and unaware of each other. Their bodies have been acting the actions they know in a loop, deconstructing them to the point where they are empty and senseless. They are not ready—but death doesn’t want to wait any longer. In the process, we have played with the concepts of life, death, the passing of time and the joy of being alive, aspiring to share with the audience moments of profound humanity, fear, rage, and tenderness. For this project, eleven artists of different generations, six nationalities, and four different schools come together, offering their bodies and their own stories to this truly collaborative theater piece.

Remedios: Moira Zhang
Adela: Catalina Balladares
Federico: Pau Zabaleta Llauger
Isabel: Alba Quezada
Music composer and Piano Man: Manel Paret Espadaler
The Singer: Lucía Gregorio Navarro
Soundscape and Peeping Tom: Anh Nguyen
The Chorus of the world of the Dead: 
James DeVelder, Mica Reed, Schuyler Mainier and Emma Santamaria


Scenic Designer: Maiko Chai
Lighting Designer: Jennifer Fok
Costumer Designer: Ariel Pellman
Sound Designer: Ien deNio
Projections Designer: Yana Biryükova
Associate Lighting Designer: Indigo Garcia
Costume Supervisor: Lora Lavon Dole
Props Supervisor: Lizzy Soglin
APEX executive director and producer: Cara Hagan
APEX festival Manager: Lindsey Zinbarg

The creation of [el] LIVING has been documented by Anna Gladkov-Kaganovich
Photography by Nathaniel Johnston

Premiered in the III APEX festival, New York, March 7 and 8 2026

College of Performing Arts - The New School






Notice to Appear

conceived, written and directed by

Irina Kruzhilina

currently in development

August 
2025
La Mama
New York Notice to Appear is an interactive experience, live theatrical performance, and staged public tribunal. Notice to Appear exposes the dysfunctional dynamics of the U.S. immigration courts and the forces determining asylum seekers’ fate. It interrogates the roles of all court actors—and the public’s responsibility—in the asylum crisis.

A crucial part of the asylum process is the Individual Merits Hearing, where immigration judges determine whether someone stays or is deported. These rulings vanish into a black hole—unseen, unrecorded, inaccessible. Based on months of research—dozens of first-hand court observations, interviews with judges, ICE attorneys, asylum seekers, immigration lawyers and interpreters— Notice to Appear transforms this hidden world into participatory civic theater.

Notice to Appear is produced by Visual Echo in association with Dream Stack Productions. The project is supported by NYSCA, LMCC, and the Venturous Theatre Fund and has been developed through residencies at Mercury Store and NACL, as well as En Garde Arts’ Uncommon Voices program.
Work in progress creative team

conceived, written and directed: Irina Kruzhilina
Research and Editing: Thijs Beuming
Sound Designer: Anthony Dean
Video and visual designers: Rodrigo Pocidonio and Moira Zhang
Dramaturg: John Clinton Eisner
Movement directors: Pau Zabaleta Llauger and Irina Kruzhilina
Camera Operators: Colin Wilson and Moira Zhang
Voice Consultant: Anne Gottlieb
Production Assistants: Anamaria Willars and Dilan Onay
Stage Manager: Noah Latty
Production Manager: Thijs Beuming


Work in progress Performers

Yadira Correa
Che Kabia
Ema Zivkovic
Zachary W. Desmond
Sade Namei
Pau Zabaleta Llauger 
Anamaria Willars

Photography by Pavel Antonov




UNSAY

directed by

Moira Zhang

May 
2025
Bank Street Theater
New York

UNSAY is a performance that was meant to be dedicated to the past, but also to the present, about repressed language and collective memory. It is a performance about the institutional failure around the world: The failure of language, the failure of narratives and how they leads to the failure of politics. It is an anatomy of the action of revolting.
Conner Simmons: Composer, Sound Designer, Performer
Freja Højland Høj: Singer, Performer, Deviser
Jing Wang: Co-director, Deviser, Performer
Noyu Ueda: Co-director, Writer, Dramaturg, Deviser
Pau Zabaleta Llauger: Movement Director, Deviser, Performer
Rodrigo Pocidônio: Deviser, Performer
Moira Zhang: Director, Deviser, Performer




TETO

directed by 

Pau Zabaleta Llauger Maria flies all the way from Uruguay to New York and shows up uninvited and by surprise at Teto’s, her estranged older step brother, doorstep, 10 years after the last time they saw each other.María: Lía Garay
Teto: Pau Zabaleta Llauger

Cinematographer: Isabella Cooper
Music by: Manel Paret Espadaler
Sound by: Sky Parnes and Noah Engle
Sound Assistant: Brian Yeh
Script: Erin Gwydr



Subterranean Memories

directed by

Irina Kruzhilina

May
2024
Westbeth
New York

Subterranean Memories invites the audience on an immersive journey to a desolate no-man’s land in a distant future, where inhabitants wait for the end to come. Following a catastrophic disaster, a resilient community has established itself in the basement of an abandoned, artist complex for a hundred years. What binds these people as a community is their commitment to preserving their memories of certain things, concepts, and rituals that defined the old world and are now being replicated in the new one. The audience is welcomed to observe a moving memory ritual, as residents showcase remnants of the past era that have ceased to exist in their current world—a world stripped of handwriting, theater, birthday parties, weddings, human kindness, and seasons.
Devised, written, designed and performed by:
Alina Burke
Miranda C. Derossi
Sydney H. Green
Harper Jones
Neka Knowles
Lars Montanaro
Noah Murray
Stella Rea Barnabe
Rodrigo Pocidônio
Deana P. Taheri
Tomoka Takahashi
Michael T. Valdes
Jing Wang
Anamaría Willars
Colin Hirsch Wilson
Pau Zabaleta llauger
YuHan "Moria" Zhang

Stage Manager: Max Mooney
SM assistant: Lindsey Zinbarg
Photography by Maria Baranova




HOMOFOBIA interiorizada / a visual performance in Brooklyn

by

Pau Zabaleta Llauger

January
2024
Streets of Brooklyn An improvised healing performance where all fears of being rejected are projected outside and shared with passersby on the streets of BrooklynCreated and performed by 
Pau Zabaleta Llauger

Documented by 
Mica Lynn

Edited by
Pau Zabaleta Llauger


La Lletjor

conceived and directed by

Pau Zabaleta Llauger and Marina Collado Bennasar

December
2022
Site Specific//La vecindad
Oaxaca


VIDEO La Lletjor (the ugliness) is a site specific work in progress about a couple who are afraid of the outside world and decides to never leave the house again. We get to know their fears and hopes in a poetic and visual exercise.
 
Created and directed by Pau Zabaleta Llauger and Marina Collado Bennasar

Production Assistant: Fernando Morales Ramírez

La Lletjor is a work in progress that has had two different iterations for now. The first one happened in Oaxaca, México in 2022 and the second one took place in New York, USA in 2024.

The picture from the first itiration are screenshots from the video recorded by Mauricio Garduño.





Te quiero, la casa está hecha un desastre

conceived and directed by

Pau Zabaleta Llauger and Fernando Morales Ramírez

May
2022
La Locomotora Foro Escénico
Oaxaca

Two lonely men walk every day through the streets of the same city, unaware that chance is playing with them.

The day comes when they are invited to dance a waltz together. If they accept that invitation, their lives will change, and their private spaces will no longer be private from one another.

"I Love You, the House Is a Mess" is a visual theater and dance piece created and performed by Ferchi Mora (Oaxaca) and Pau Zabaleta (Barcelona), in which, through a series of images, we come to know the lives of these characters—lives not so different from our own. We are invited into their intimacy, their boredom, their fears, and their desires.






Hrusibani (Re-nacer)

Vangelis Dance Company

December
2021
Teatro Macedonio Alcalá
Oaxaca In life we experience a birth as soon as we depart the womb of our mother.A certain birth can also be experienced each time we celebrate our birthday but also it can beeach time we have a deep and profound transformation in our life, a rebirth.We may need to leave home and our family, for only to experience the world with our own eyes, with our own skin and heart.We may experience hardships, pains, death and the beauties of life, for only to pass through to our next stage of life.We are being called to evaluate and feel where we are in life to be reborn in a life of love, acceptance and community.
Dancers:  Elia Pangaro, Pierre d’Haveloose, Hanna  Schaar, Fernando Morales Ramírez, Pau Zabaleta Llauger,  Yui Hirabayashi, Cynthia Sepúlveda,  Kylee goodwin, Rosario Ordoñez Fuentes, Marlene Coronel,  Carmín,

Artistic Director: Vangelis Legakis Choreography & Direction: Jose Agudo  
Production: Unity Space
Co / Production: Moves MX Assistant Production: Cynthia Sepulveda Vazquez
Dramaturgy: Eleno Guzmán & Vangelis Legakis
Original Music: Miguel Ángel Frausto
Lighting Design: Vangelis Legakis
Costume Design: Lubia Corres Communication: Selene de Cristal Sánchez
Studio: Rosario Ordoñez Fuentes Promotion Designer: Carlos Franco
Photography: Mario Arturo Martínez





Todo lo cercano se aleja

Directed by

Pau Zabaleta Llauger

November
2021
Teatro Juárez
Oaxaca

VIDEO A cold, thick drop falls and slides down your bare back. A bat passes just above your hair. A dry thorn pierces the skin of your left foot. And candles are lit to mark your path and guide you back home.

Everything that is close drifts away. And everything that comes near was once far away. That is how life unfolds, with its dreams, hopes, fears, and shadows—and each of them always ends up becoming a memory in the universe of the mind, accompanying us as our dead do.
Solo Performer: Rosario Ordoñez Fuentes
Choreography: Pau Zabaleta Llauger
Special Collaboration: Helmar Álvarez
Invited Artist: Luis Felipe Ortega
Music: Miguel Ángel Frausto
 

TEACHING ARTIST

Pau began his career as a teacher inspired by the work of many of his own teachers, who, in personal conversations, shared how they had grown and evolved as artists by breaking down their practice in order to teach it, and through their interactions with the students and colleagues who attended those trainings. The teacher always becomes the student, and the students become teachers.

In 2022, he began by leading his first workshop in Viewpoints and Scenic Composition, inspired by the training he received from the SITI Company in New York the previous year. From there, he continued developing and sharing his own understanding of the practice, complementing it with his experience as an actor over the past twenty years.

Pau has led workshops in Oaxaca, Mexico City, and Barcelona. More recently, in 2026, he has continued developing this practice through his work as a teaching artist with the documentary theater company Pink Fang in New York City, teaching K–12 students as well as senior citizens and young adults with intellectual disabilities. This experience has opened a window for him to share his practice and build community from a feminist, queer-inclusive perspective, inspired by decolonial practices.




















                   Resumé
Pau Zabaleta Llauger is a Catalan performing artist, director, and teacher working across theater, movement, objects, and film.

He holds an MFA in Contemporary Theater and Performance from The New School (2023-26) in New York City with a 100% merit Scholarship and the Judith Malina Award for Artistic Distinction, and a BFA in acting from the Institut del Teatre (2002-06) in Barcelona and DAMU (2007) in Prague.  

His last work a director and performer is [el] LIVING (2026) performed at the stage of The School of Drama.

He performed across Europe and Moscow with the Czech-Finnish ensemble KREPSKO directed by Linnea Happonen from 2007 to 2019, appearing in Mad Cup of Tea (2007), Dronte (2009), Bistro Beyond (2012), Edgar’s Echo (2016), and Illuminium (2018), among other Krepsko productions and cabarets. While in Europe he collaborated with Martina Cabanas Collell, Centre de Titelles de Lleida, Carlota Subirós and others.
As a freelance artist, he later moved overseas, first to Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2021, where he continued performing, directing, and teaching. His projects there include Lo más cercano se aleja (2021), Hrusibani (2021), Te quiero, la casa está hecha un desastre (2022), and La lletjor (2022).

He moved to New York in 2023 to persue an MFA at The New School. He directed and performed in the visual ensemble piece [el] LIVING (march 2026) and the documentary that followed this process. He has worked as movement director alongside Irina Kruzhilina and as an actor in Notice to Appear (2025), first shown as a work in progress at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, as a choreographer associate on Terror Is the Order of the Day (2025) at The Flea Theater directed by Tea Alagić and as a devising asistant on SpaceBridge (2025) directed by Irina Kruzhilina at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.
He is a Teaching Artist with Pink Fang.

He has dipped his toes in film making and has directed a few experimental films two short narrative films: Behind Closed Doors (2024) and Teto (2024) and as an actor can be seen in About the Beginning (2023) a feature film directed by Amulio Espinosa and produced by PineCone.

Interview at Bold Journey January 22, 2025



KREPSKO (2007 - 2019)

directed by Linnea Happonen

I was an invited artist with the International Theater Group Krepsko for over a decade from 2007 until 2019.

International theatre group 
KREPSKO 
was founded in 2001 in Prague.

Starting with outrageous and brave improvisations, 
KREPSKO has created their own unique theatrical language 
based on enchanting atmospheres, dark fairytales 
and absurd tragicomical moments. 

They use aspects of circus and puppet 
theatre to tell stories without words 
and to reach the deepest secrets 
and emotions of the audience. 

KREPSKO
has created more than 20 reprising shows,
performed all around the world 
and garnered numerous awards. 

See further information and artistic and techincal credits:

Mad cup of Tea (2007)

Dronte (2007)

Bistro Beyond (2012)

Edgard’s Echo (2016)

Gertrude Will Nicht Tanzen (2018)

Illuminium (2019)

These projects were performed throughout Europe and in festivals such DanceInversion in Moscow, Unidram in Potsdam, Letní Letná in Prague, and in theaters in Dresden, Chemnitz, Bielefeld, Oostrava, Luxembourg, Tartu, Tallinn, Helsinki, Turku, Lublin, Szczecin etc.





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pauzabaletallauger(at)gmail.com