Two giant warriors from Xian welcome visitors to a shed in the La Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
They were part of the staging of the opera Turandot, scheduled for the last time by the Teatro Colón in 2019, but now spectators can get as close as if they were the ministers Ping, Pang, Pong on stage.
It is allowed to be photographed at their feet, even touching them.
The warriors are not made of terracotta, nor is the enormous head that forms part of the Rigoletto set and can be seen in the background of the Colón Fábrica, the space opened by the largest lyrical theater in Argentina to show what is behind the curtain, either.
"We invite the public to, instead of entering through Libertad Street to sit down to watch a show from the front, imagine that they enter from behind," says the general director of the Teatro Colón, María Victoria Alcaraz, during a tour of the 7,500 meters of the space.
With one hand he lifts what appear to be heavy iron structures or fragile ceramic pots.
They are made of Styrofoam or wood, although at first glance no one would tell.
The warriors of Xian from the opera 'Turandot' welcome visitors to the Colón Factory.Silvina Frydlewsky
Everything that is exhibited has been manufactured in the workshops of the theater. Among its 1,250 employees, there are artisans who still paint the curtains by hand, others who make the dresses, the props, the decoration. For the staging of La Bohème, some 400 people from scenography took part, details the video installed next to one of the Parisian stages of this Puccini opera. The production required four months of work.
“The way of working is the same for a hundred years. In some cases it became obsolete, for example, most theaters today print the curtains, they do not paint them, but with streaming, which allows us to show everything up close, we, who had been left vintage, now revalue ourselves”, Alcaraz highlights. The general director says that one of the sources of financing for the theater is the rental of everything they make.
In a space intended for the little ones, you can see helmets, crowns, swords, a throne to sit on and other details of props placed at their disposal so that they can dress up and for a while become the protagonists of their own performance.
"Not only is it successful with the boys, the parents also want to play, so we are thinking about how to give it more space," says Alcaraz.
One of the possibilities being considered is to give life to the pirate Conrad's ship and be able to go through fictional storms on it.
The installation of a walkway system is also planned to allow the shed to be traversed from above.
When in 2017 she became the first director of the Colón, she already announced that she was seeking to attract new audiences. Colón Fábrica is also going in that direction. Installed in the emerging artistic corridor of the La Boca neighborhood —where the Benito Quinquela Museum, Fundación Proa, Proa21 and Fundación Andreani are also located—, the new space attracts visitors who have never been to the lyrical coliseum to see a play. “We never went [to Colón], but we would like to because this is very cool. We are here because some friends recommended it to us,” says Venezuelan Gladys Benítez, who tours the place accompanied by her husband.
In Colón Fábrica there are sets exhibited as they can be seen on the stage and others, such as the Swan Lake ballet, disassembled and stacked.
"We do not hide that this is a storage space," says Alcaraz, showing that each piece has its corresponding identification for when it has to be reassembled.
From this shed they will be transferred to the Teatro Colón when necessary.
It will be the case of La Bohème.
During the last three months, visitors have been able to see some of the 180 dresses made for its staging and peek into the Parisian cafe recreated in it.
In February, however, it will disappear from there: that work will inaugurate the 2022 lyrical season. "We will complete the virtuous circle of having built it, premiered it, exhibited it in the warehouse and, finally, replace it," he says.