The theater enters your house
And the theaters drew the curtain . Because it's time to stay, enjoy home, spend time between books, movies, series... and, of course, theater . The movement #I stay at home floods the networks and, under this hashtags , endless initiatives that, in addition to throwing a message of solidarity They give us keys to entertain ourselves, get used to to travel without leaving these four walls and why not? discover that culture that we have forgotten, parked by our "so complicated" life.
theater library , platform for the management and loan of digital content from the Performing Arts Documentation Center (CDAEM) , makes more than 1,600 works and theatrical shows available to anyone who wants to. It is his way of opening the curtain again, of giving voice to the art of the stage and bringing it to our screens with a simple free subscription.
Judging by the data, it seems that the initiative likes. "On Friday, March 13, we had 9,100 users and the increase had been 10%, in just three days. The demand for records grew so much that on Friday afternoon the system collapsed, hence, users had problems entering during the weekend, although fortunately it has already been overcome and the Teatroteca is operational again" Javier de Dios López, director of the CDAEM, and Berta Muñoz Cáliz, researcher and coordinator of the library and users of the CDAEM, explain to Traveler.es.
And it is that, as they say, "It seems that the temporary suspension of performances has not made the spectators turn their backs on the stage, many of them, many more than before, have turned their eyes to the Teatroteca". More tests? Of the 995 building loans that occurred from March 1 to 10, it went to 2,636, between 11 and 17. "The number of loans has almost tripled since the theaters closed" , abstract.
Nor is it surprising to look at the tables, albeit virtually, if we take into account that, as Javier and Berta explain to us, "Since its inception, the theater has represented the human being in struggle with his environment. Fighting for their survival, for their dignity, for what makes us human as individuals and as a group. For what we want and what we fear. Sometimes fighting for trivial reasons, and in those cases we recognize ourselves as small and laughable... There's the comedy."
"Since its inception, the theater has represented the human being in struggle with his environment"
And yes, as no one can escape, these days they are about fighting. "We live in these days a challenge as a society, yes, but that challenge is made up of millions of individual challenges, that is, how each of us will deal with this crisis. And from that, of that struggle and of the individual in crisis, Whether to overwhelm, make us laugh, sing or put before our eyes our customs, greatness and misery, the theater is about. An art by definition collective, on the other hand. For all this, At a time when we need each other so much, the stage is an amazing source of moral and vital energy for all of us."
WHAT IS IT AND WHAT WILL WE FIND?
theater library It was born as a research platform and has been open to the public since last year. It works like a library loan system: you register and "reserve" the work you want to see and to which you will have access for two days and then "return" it to the platform.
What happens if the video we want is already loaned to another user? That we will have to put ourselves on the waiting list until it is available again. In fact, given the high demand that the platform is registering, from the CDAEM they have proposed to the users of this service to return the borrowed titles as soon as they see them, so that more viewers can access them.
Among the more than 1,600 pieces, not only adults will be served great classics and recent works, but also the smallest of the house that you can enjoy puppet theater, musical plays, staged stories, groundbreaking versions of traditional stories, works based on images with hardly any text...
"On the main page of the Teatroteca we have created a section, theater for children , with some of these works. Among them there is companies that have won the National Prize for Theater for Children and Youth, and great professionals in this genre. It's not just the ones you see on the main page, there are more on the catalog that is accessed through the search engine" , say Javier and Berta.
Much is being said about children and little about adolescents. However, from the CDAEM they have not forgotten about them and have created a section called Youth theater . "Young people 12 or 14 years old can see staged stories about topics that interest them, both those that have been written expressly for them and those of the universal theater that interest us and affect us all”.
Because, as Javier and Berta underline, "Seeing theater on the screen is a good way to start learning about this art, fundamental in our culture, and also to reflect on human behavior. And also to have fun and laugh at ourselves, which after all is one of the fundamental elements of comedy (there are many comedies in this Teatroteca, by the way)".
Puppet theater, musical plays, staged stories, groundbreaking versions of traditional stories...
Getting started in an art is very good and also laughing at oneself; but the theater goes further, the theater teaches us empathy, humanizes us. "It helps us understand the behavior of others and, therefore, it humanizes us; it makes us smarter, more flexible, more permeable. It is very necessary in these times when fanaticism and rigidity show up where it is least expected. And being familiar with this art since childhood is no small thing," they conclude.
In addition, the Performing Arts and Music Documentation Center has made available to users the digital magazines Figures, Up the Curtain and Don Galán in which interviews with different creators and managers of the performing arts can be read.