The Comedia theater in the city of Córdoba is ready in terms of the civil works for the reconstruction of the room destroyed by a fire in 2007. But there are still large investments to make it functional: lights, curtains, machinery and sound that have already begun bid
The capital’s municipality has already launched several electronic auctions for equipment for almost 500 million pesos, which are added to the more than 1,100 million that were invested in the reconstruction of the theater located at Rivadavia 254, in the heart of the city. They have a completion date of March 31.
The first of the auctions has a budget of 315 million pesos. It consists of the executive project, the static structure for the stage machinery, including the mouthpiece, the counterbalancing system, the fire curtain and the system of motorized rods.
It is a steel structure that is separated from the walls, as if it were an internal casing of the stage, on which the light grids, the fixed and motorized rods, and the curtains are mounted. In addition, the fire curtain is a metal curtain that is activated manually or automatically, and that isolates the stage from the rest of the room in the event of a fire, explained from the Ministry of Culture commanded by Mariano Almada.
The second auction is for 177 million pesos, for stage lighting. “Everything is state-of-the-art, with LED lights,” explained Almada.
In addition, 286 seats out of a total of 495 planned for the theater have already been purchased and placed. The remaining 209 seats will arrive in the coming weeks. 120 chairs out of a total of 180 also arrived.
Of the total number of chairs, 60 are low-height, the same number are medium-height, while the rest will function as stools, which will allow them to be located as mobile stalls.
The Ministry of Culture still has two other files to finish equipping the room. It deals with the system of curtains, curtains and scenes. The other file covers the video and sound system. They are expected to go up for auction in the coming weeks.
What has been done so far
The civil work was for the total reconstruction of the Teatro Comedia, which now has mobile seats, will allow it to have a central stage, with an audience located on gradual platforms on the traditional stage, and more spectators on its sides.
The audience of the room has double access, both from the foyer main ground floor as from the foyer first floor. He pullman high floor, with 154 seats, is accessible from the second floor. There is also the light, sound and projection booth.
The theater has an Italian-type stage, 19 meters wide, 12 meters deep and 16.5 meters high. The grill is 14 meters away to enable the handling of the curtains, the scenery and lighting rods.
Behind the stage there is a six-story building with an elevator where the dressing rooms are.
It has multiple fire safety measures: from certified doors that do not allow the passage of fire, its own cisterns with smoke detectors and sprinklers, two pressurized water hydrants and a stage with a metal curtain that also cuts the flames.
The fire
It was 3 in the morning on June 28, 2007, when the fire began to advance through the room of the Comedia theater. It completely destroyed it. Nothing was left of the room with 650 seats.
El Comedia had been acquired by the Municipality just a few months before. At the end of September 2005, the Juez administration decided to buy it from the owners who had made the decision to close it. He agreed to pay 1.4 million pesos, in 12 installments. The room reopened on October 12 of that year.
From the night of the fire and until March 2021, only progress was made in cleaning up the place a little and in some minor works. Part of what little I know it did had to be demolished because it was poorly executed, such as the roof.