Buenos Aires, Apr 14 (EFE).- To go from the covered foundations, the collapsed columns and the stones with hidden stories to the current image of the Roman Theater of Mérida, an architectural jewel that, since 1993, is a World Heritage Site, there was to go through an arduous path of excavation and restoration that, begun in 1910, spanned five decades.
This process of reconstruction of the most important work of the historical ensemble of the former Emérita Augusta, which dates back more than 2,000 years and which has housed a Classical Theater Festival since 1933, can be seen starting this Friday in Buenos Aires, in the photographic exhibition “Theatrum Mundi”, installed in the San Martín Cultural Center, in the Argentine capital.
“Last year we already started a twinning, collaborative relationship with the Teatro San Martín, taking ‘Julio César,’ directed by José María Muscari and starring Moria Casán,” Jesús Cimarro, director of the International Classical Theater Festival, explained to EFE. de Mérida, present in Buenos Aires for the opening of this exhibition.
In his opinion, shared with Diego Berardo, director of the San Martín Cultural Center, “it was important that some of the festival’s activities be here”, after the aforementioned Argentine production that in 2022 integrated the Festival’s programming.
This exhibition, inaugurated in 2016 and which has since traveled to other places inside and outside of Spain, includes plans of the current reality and the different restorations, texts that explain the parts of the theater and the performances, and images that try to reconstruct what the theater was like. building in its Roman times.
With this, according to the Spanish producer, the aim is to show “how the architects imagined the Roman Theater of Mérida with its colors, with its curtains, with its awnings so that the heat would not overwhelm the spectators and also where the different classes were located. social at that time.
A BRIDGE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
In Berardo’s opinion, “it is very important” that crossing between the two worlds, “that exchange” that “ends up enriching both sides: the Buenos Aires and the Argentines, but also the Spanish culture that, in short, enriches Ibero-American culture”.
The programming, a year ago, of an Argentine work and the possibility that, according to Cimarro, in 2024 another production of the Teatro San Martín could travel to Mérida represent a round trip between the performing arts of the two shores that, in the opinion of the director of the festival, “can contribute a lot” to Spain and Argentina.
“The theater that is done in Argentina is one of the best in the world, it is not because we are in Buenos Aires, but because they have shown it with their work. There are great actresses, great actors, playwrights, directors, directors… I think that the proposals, both in the public theater and in the private theater, that this country does are very good and it is important to have that collaboration”, he indicated.
For Diego Berardo, faced with a hypothetical arrival of works from the Classical Theater Festival in Argentina, the Mérida contest “has an identity and a particularity that is highly represented by the space where it takes place”, but he did express his interest “in the intersection that can be done” towards the local scene, that “nourishes” and can “provide tools” to see “how” a project of these characteristics develops.
NINE DECADES
The sixty-ninth edition of the Mérida International Classical Theater Festival, which will be held from July 1 to August 27, will be marked by the celebration of the 90th anniversary of the iconic stage as the venue for this event, inaugurated in 1933 by Margarita Xirgu and his “Medea”.
Despite historical ups and downs, such as the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the post-war socioeconomic crisis and the Second World War (1939-1945), which led to the suspension of activities for several years, the event continued its work and it is today the only benchmark in Spain for theater dedicated to Greco-Latin themes.
The Roman Theater “is an incomparable setting where you can listen to texts that have been written 2,000 years ago or contemporary texts on Greco-Latin-Greco-Roman themes, with a current language, with current proposals, preserving that essence” from nine decades ago, Cimarro commented.
Now, that theater of more than 2000 years, even if it is in an exhibition, is in Buenos Aires.
Concepcion M. Moreno