The Comediants fund now has a permanent home.

Barcelona"We can finally sleep soundly!" exclaimed Jaume Bernadet, a member of Comediants, on Wednesday, after recounting the recent adventures of the company's archives. For the past ten years, Comediants had been searching for a home for more than 20,000 documents and materials from the over 250 shows they produced over five decades. Between 2021 and 2022, a significant portion of the archive was transferred to the Documentation Center of the Museum of Performing Arts (MAE) at the Institut del Teatre, which has since inventoried, cataloged, digitized, and published it. on the Escena Digital website to make it accessible to everyone. Now, with 80% of the work completed, the MAE has presented it to the public. "We haven't managed to create a house-museum or a foundation, but our holistic way of working can be seen here, through the collection," Bernadet emphasized. "It's a very special legacy because it has so many different types. This doesn't always happen when we receive collections from companies," explained the MAE's director, Anna Valls. Specifically, the museum has received giant papier-mâché figures, costumes, press clippings (more than 14,000 news items), figurines, masks, models, stickers, photographs, videos, awards, and programs. "We asked them to make a very large selection of the costumes and the tadpole figures. It was complicated because it involved the effort of choosing what is significant and what will still be significant in thirty years when we want to put on an exhibition," Valls pointed out.

Following this process, they preserved 78 costumes, 19 models, 15 giant heads, and thousands of documents that bear witness to the company's 50 years of artistic activity. "We have invented our own language based on collective creation and teamwork, and we have presented joyful, free, and open works. We have been and are a reflection of a political and social situation: the euphoric years of the end of the dictatorship and the discovery of freedoms," recalled Rita Kuan Jin Hua, a member of Comediants.

A collection fragmented into three

Although a large part of the Comediants collection remains at the MAE (Museum of Performing Arts), some of the company's materials are held in two other institutions: the Municipal Archive of Canet de Mar (the town that was home to Comediants throughout its history) and the National Library of Catalonia. In Canet de Mar, "more than 7,000 slides, the group's earliest photographs, posters, and negatives" are kept, according to Bernadet, while the library houses the original materials for the books. Sun, all alone, The night and Dreams: a book to read in the dark"We ask that the collection not be further fragmented. It would be ideal if everything were in the same space, to understand our artistic and experiential diversity," Kuan stated.

In this regard, the company has also emphasized the importance of having a performing arts museum to house all theatrical collections. "There's a lack of a large space where the theater world can physically and permanently display its history. Otherwise, a museum isn't worthy of the name," Kuan lamented. The Performing Arts Museum project has been dragging on for over a decade: the City Council and the Provincial Council They wanted to place it in the Press Housean idea that was initially dismissed but which this fall It has been brought up again.During the presentation of the collection, Pau González, the Barcelona Provincial Council's Culture Deputy, said they are "working on it" and emphasized "the importance of preserving and sharing" these materials. "It is essential to keep the memory of our theater alive, because it is an inseparable part of our country's history," González stated.