Her plays in Catalan and Spanish are critically acclaimed hits. But British director Tamzin Townsend says she was always bad at languages.

At Barcelona's National Theatre the curtain goes up on Jo sóc un altre! (I am someone else), the latest play in a series promoting new Catalan writers.

Alongside the Catalan actors, writer and backstage crew is an unusual figure, a fair-haired woman who is, as one Catalan  publication put it, "the director with the strangest name in Barcelona".

Of course, in her native Cambridgeshire in Britain, Tamzin Townsend's name is perfectly ordinary.

But Townsend is far from a one-hit wonder with a funny name.

She is also responsible for three plays running simultaneously in Madrid – in Spanish.

Theatre queen: Tamzin Townsend

El Método Grönholm, a comedy about a cut-throat job selection process, is on the point of clocking up 600 performances at the Marquina.

Gorda, the Spanish version of Fat Pig by American playwright Neil Labute, has been a sell-out since it opened in January.

At Madrid's Circulo de Bellas Artes, as part of a festival of theatre from the Spanish provinces, La luciérnaga producciones, a theatre group from the Canary Isles, has just performed Al Vuestro Gusto, Shakespeare's As You Like It – also directed by Townsend.

"You just need one play to be a hit and then producers start thinking you're a recipe for making lots of money," says Townsend.

She has had numerous hits. If you've seen any of the big plays in Barcelona or Madrid in recent years, there is a good chance she was the director.

The 39-year-old is in such so hot demand by Spanish producers and so much a part of the theatrical circuit in Barcelona, where she lives, as well as in Madrid, that you would assume she was born tri-lingual.

Far from it.

"I always think of what John Lennon said," Townsend tells me. "Life is what happens when you're making other plans."

"I never had any interest in living abroad. I never liked languages, never did well at them. I always enjoyed England, English theatre and living in England," she says.

"I think I saw myself as starting as an assistant director there, or as the assistant to the assistant in a theatre. But here I am in Spain directing a lot of plays in Catalan. It's surreal."

Townsend first came to Spain to have a short time out before starting her career in the UK.

She had graduated from theatre studies at the University of Kent and her boyfriend at the time talked her into studying at Barcelona University.

"He was very brilliant and I was not brilliant. It was only when we separated that I started to get on with my Spanish and Catalan because before we spoke English all the time."

Townsend was in Barcelona in a good year - 1992 when the city's cultural scene and the economy were thriving due to the Olympics.

Breakthrough

She got a summer job at the British Council and then heard about a man looking for someone to direct a Catalan version of Alan Ayckbourn's play Absurd Person Singular, translated as Bones Festes.

Townsend didn't speak Catalan, but the colleague she was working with challenged her to call anyway.

"She said if no one came through the door in the next half an hour, I had to phone. We watched the door for half an hour and no one did," Townsend remembers.

"I learnt Catalan literally from that Ayckbourn play. I directed the actors in Spanish and then I had the Catalan text and the English translation next to it. Because of all the repetitions during the rehearsals I learnt Catalan in an easy and natural way."

Her successful direction of that play won her directing work in TV on the series Oh, Europa!  Then more work in the theatre, in Catalan for the first seven years.

She progressed to work in Castilian too, as her reputation spread beyond Barcelona.

Now married to a Catalan actor and with two children, she has abandoned the idea of returning to England.

Integrating

"I feel more Spanish than I do English although I like to relax in English with English films and books," she says.

So the woman who once struggled in language classes now speaks Spanish and Catalan fluently.

"I probably have a wider vocabulary in Catalan because of all the weird plays I've done," she adds.

Although Townsend doesn't get the opportunity to direct in English in Spain, her Englishness may have proved her secret ingredient in entertaining audiences.

Latest success: Poster for Jo soc un altre (Catalan for 'I am someone else)

Not only has she regularly interpreted contemporary English language playwrights – like the Americans Neil Labute and Donald Margulies and Britons Peter Shaffer, Patrick Marber, Sharman MacDonald and Ayckbourn – but she has also injected a distinctive humour into her productions.

"We have a special sense of humour which all the English have," Townsend explains.

"I do a lot with status. Little people who shout a lot and in Catalan and Spanish plays you can also find a John Cleese."

Townsend seeks out 'acid comedies', those that use humour to make people laugh and think about serious issues.

While Townsend's ability to compete with the best Spanish directors in two foreign languages seems extraordinary, she modestly points to other expats working in the Spanish arts.

She says: "I often talk with my friend Richard Collins-Moore about our experiences here. He's become a showman on Noche Hache on Tele Cuatro. Then there's Matthew Tree, an English writer who writes in Catalan. Here he's like Nicky Hornby. Now I find that totally amazing."

Copyright Expatica

April 2006

Subject: Spain; Tamzin Townsend