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A Kind of Red Theater

Velasco–Bisbal–Tirado Arquitectos

Principals: Paula Velasco + Carlos Bisbal

"Teatrini were also simple, temporary structures. The temporary theatre lasted as long as midsummer love affair, as long as a feverish, uncertain season, and by autumn it was destroyed. A Teatrino was the place where events developed as part of life, but also where theatrical events, during summer, during the time of vacations, were sings of life."
– Aldo Rossi, A Scientific Autobiography

The theatre (as an idea, image and construction) gives us a known but also blurry imaginary. Over this, a series of diverse and temporary events and situations are placed inside the context of a delimited and open field. This ambiguous framework (both formal and programmatic) that the idea of theater gives us, is the one we have chosen to operate with in order to built a summer pavilion in the Parque Araucano.

Itinerary theatrical spectacles, sporadic displays on cities' streets, and children's puppet shows (such as Punch and Judy) are understood as wide and varied public events that built the "signs of life" (as Rossi said), that we speck to take place inside this idea of temporary theatre in the park.

To give shape to this purpose, the project takes a series of elements and components (both, as constructive and programmatic imaginaries) from several theatres through history (Roman, Greek and English), and places them indistinctively throughout de site, trying to cover it all, and at the same time, dissolving the limits of what is commonly understood as stage and public, changing it's character closer towards a playing field.

As Popova's scenographies, these parts and pieces give form to a complex unity, that operates through the complement and alternation between different elements, allowing the wide range of situations and events for this kind of theater to occur freely.

Text submitted by Velasco–Bisbal–Tirado Arquitectos