Staging a Rebirth in a Theater’s Ruins

Shows at Lima’s 1920 Municipal Theater would have a hard time bringing down the house, considering a fire largely did the job in 1998.

But that hasn’t kept the charred opera house from becoming one of the smartest places in town for shows and celebrations. Plays, concerts and musical revues usually sell out, with patrons filling the folding chairs that line the once-carpeted concrete ground floor and balconies.

From once grand and elaborate molding, crumbling plaster faces stare into the dark, stripped of their cream, aqua and gold paints by the fire.

“Oh, this is horrible. This is so sad,” said 29-year-old Fiorella Donayre as she took in the darkened theater before a recent revue of Peruvian music and dance. “I remember it when I was a girl.”

Other shows at the theater have included modern dance acts, classical music concerts and productions of “King Lear” and “Faust.”

Juan Carlos Adrianzen, who produced “Faust” last year, said he could think of no better place than a decaying opera house to represent the mind of a man descending into madness after selling his soul to the devil.

“The Municipal Theater became the work, another character in the play,” Adrianzen said. “When you put on a play, you have thousands of ways to do it. This space leaves you a thousand more ways to bring it to life.”

That’s part of the idea, said Dennis Ferguson, who heads Lima’s Municipal Theater restoration office.

When Mayor Alberto Andrade reopened the theater in March 1999 to promote its restoration, he also opened an unusual artistic opportunity for producers and directors.

The theater’s stage has evolved with each production, incorporating a metal ramp from “King Lear,” a cement platform from “Faust” and twin, three-tiered platforms from the Peruvian music revue.

At that show, video clips of interviews with dead Peruvian songwriters were projected onto the whitewashed brick wall of a neighboring building behind the stage, making the opera house feel like a ghostly, drive-in movie theater.

The locale also appealed to Frecuencia Latina, a local TV channel, which held a party there to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the end of disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori’s decade-long regime and the return of the station’s owner from self-imposed exile.

About 500 guests attended the “One Year of Liberty” celebration in December. They watched musical and dance allegories in the opera hall, then retired for cocktails in the lobby, where brass chandeliers, tall mirrors and mauve marble Corinthian columns were untouched by the blaze.

Alfonso Maldonado, Frecuencia Latina’s public relations director, said the theater seemed perfect for marking Peru’s return to democracy. “It is a cultural center in the process of rebirth, like a phoenix from the ashes--like Peru,” he said.

Ferguson said the $30-million reconstruction project will begin early next year and the fully restored theater will open in 2005.

The city began with a $5-million renovation budget, to which Spain chipped in $15 million and the Inter-American Development Bank added $5 million. Ferguson said the city is looking to Peru’s national government and private donors for the rest.

Using pre-fire photos, the project will preserve the opera house’s original polyglot of Old World styles and restore the 1,385-seating capacity, but it will also modernize the acoustics and expand the backstage area. Before the fire, the limited backstage--and a tanking local economy and turmoil caused by Maoist Shining Path rebels--had bumped Lima off the international tour circuit for several decades, Ferguson said.

The city has also bought five properties within three blocks of the theater to house restaurants, cafes and galleries, with underground parking linking six other area theaters, one of which currently shows porno movies.

Adrianzen, however, believes that restoring the site is a misguided idea. It will lose its vogue in time, and it is too expensive to continue using, he said.

The lack of a roof and stage wall means actors need to wear microphones to be heard. Those costs, plus the need to rent lighting and sounds systems for each show, add up, Adrianzen said.

It costs $100,000 to $120,000 to produce a show in the Municipal Theater, which can only seat 400 now, he said. In contrast, shows across town in the 200-seat theater at Catholic University’s cultural center cost $20,000 to $30,000.

“When you enter, it moves you--it is like entering a ruin,” Adrianzen said of the Municipal Theater. “It is a beautiful ruin, but it’s not a theater.”