The changing curtain of Teatre El Jardí

A theatre curtain is often the first image an audience sees and the last one it remembers. Before the lights rise, it conceals the stage, gathers attention and creates a brief pause between ordinary life and performance. At Teatre El Jardí in Figueres, that threshold belongs to a building with more than a century of cultural activity.

The theatre was inaugurated in 1914, during a period when civic theatres, concert halls and cinemas were becoming important meeting places across Catalonia. Its history is therefore larger than any single textile. The curtain reflects changing ideas about design, technology, public entertainment and the relationship between a theatre and its city.

A complete, uninterrupted record of every curtain used at El Jardí is difficult to establish from public information alone. Curtains are replaced, altered, repainted, stored or discarded, while programmes and architectural plans are more likely to survive in an archive. The most responsible history must therefore distinguish documented facts from the material clues and performance traditions that surround them.

For visitors from Australia, the experience may feel familiar. Like theatres in Melbourne, Sydney or Adelaide, El Jardí is a civic room as much as a performance venue: a place for touring work, local productions, school audiences, cinema, music and community gatherings. Its curtain has helped mark those changes without needing to speak.

A theatre shaped by civic life

Teatre El Jardí emerged in the early twentieth century, when Figueres was investing in public culture and urban identity. A theatre was expected to serve several purposes at once. It could welcome drama, concerts, public ceremonies and popular entertainment, while providing an architectural expression of the city’s confidence.

The opening year, 1914, places El Jardí within a significant period of European theatre history. Electric lighting was changing stage design, touring companies were expanding their repertories and audiences were becoming accustomed to more elaborate visual effects. The curtain was part of this transformation. It separated the auditorium from scenery, performers and stage machinery while announcing that the room was ready for an event.

Its role would have been familiar to Australian audiences attending an early picture palace or civic theatre. In Australia, venues such as Melbourne’s Princess Theatre or Adelaide’s historic theatres also developed as places where entertainment, architecture and local pride met. The comparison is useful, even though each building has its own history and stage traditions.

Why the curtain matters architecturally

A main curtain is practical equipment, but it is also part of a theatre’s visual language. Its colour, weight, fullness and method of opening influence the audience’s first impression. A heavy drape can suggest ceremony and permanence; a lighter textile may suit a flexible venue used for contemporary performance, school work and community events.

The curtain also works with the proscenium arch, auditorium decoration and lighting positions. When closed, it completes the picture presented to the audience. When opened, it frames the stage and directs attention towards bodies, scenery, projections or an empty space prepared for movement. Its proportions must accommodate the architecture, while its mechanism must operate safely and quietly.

That balance becomes particularly important in a venue with a varied programme. A theatre presenting opera requires different technical conditions from a children’s show, a film screening or a contemporary dance work. El Jardí’s continuing use across disciplines means that the curtain belongs to a working system rather than a museum display.

Reading an incomplete record

The history of a theatre curtain is rarely found in one document. Evidence may appear in construction records, renovation files, photographs, newspaper reviews, technical inventories, fabric samples and memories shared by former staff or performers. A curtain visible in one photograph may be a replacement, while an absent curtain may simply have been drawn offstage during the image-making.

The most useful research questions are material and specific. When was the curtain installed? Was it made locally or ordered through a specialist supplier? Did it use a manual rope system, a track or a later motorised mechanism? Was its appearance chosen to match the original interior, or did a renovation introduce a new colour and texture?

These questions avoid turning uncertain details into folklore. They also recognise that stage equipment has a working life. Curtains absorb dust, suffer friction, fade under lighting and require regular inspection. A replacement does not erase the past; it records another stage in the building’s practical history.

From grand drapery to flexible scenography

Theatre design has changed considerably since 1914. Earlier productions often relied on painted backdrops, scenic flats and formal curtains to establish location and mood. Later work introduced abstract sets, bare stages, projection, multimedia and site-responsive performance. The curtain could become a neutral screen, a moving scenic element or something to be removed altogether.

That shift can be seen across contemporary cultural programming. A production may use the stage as an intimate room, a concert platform, a cinema screen or an open architectural volume. In this context, the curtain is no longer just an entrance and exit device. It can control sightlines, conceal a set change, shape acoustics or become part of the choreography.

The creative process behind a site-specific performance often makes this relationship especially clear. Artists may respond to the building’s circulation, scale, history and backstage areas before deciding whether a conventional curtain belongs in the work at all. site-specific performance can turn the theatre’s existing surfaces and thresholds into active performers.

A curtain for many generations

Teatre El Jardí serves audiences with different expectations of a theatrical beginning. Older patrons may associate a closed red curtain with ceremony and anticipation. Children may experience it as a mysterious barrier hiding a new world. Young performers from ATEB may regard it less as a symbol than as a practical boundary they must learn to cross with confidence.

This generational range is familiar in Australia, where school matinees, family sessions and evening performances often share the same building. A venue might welcome a kindergarten audience in the morning, a touring company after dark and a community rehearsal during the week. The curtain must accommodate this rhythm, even when audiences never see the technical work involved.

The stage school’s presence adds another layer to the curtain’s story. Training children, young people and adults connects the object with rehearsal, nerves, concentration and discovery. For a first-time performer, walking through the curtain can be a significant personal milestone. For an experienced company, it is one movement in a carefully timed sequence.

Preserving a living threshold

Conservation of a theatre curtain involves more than keeping fabric intact. Specialists must consider fire safety, mechanical reliability, dust, humidity, fading and the demands of current productions. Any historic textile retained in service may need careful limits, while a modern replacement must still respect the room’s character.

The most meaningful preservation approach allows the curtain to remain connected to use. Photographs, oral histories, maintenance records and production programmes can document changes that the textile itself cannot explain. Recording the stories of ushers, technicians, teachers and performers can be as valuable as identifying a manufacturer’s mark.

At El Jardí, the curtain’s history is therefore a continuing one. It begins with the theatre’s early civic role, passes through changing forms of entertainment and remains present in today’s programme of theatre, music, dance, opera, cinema, circus and family work. Its significance lies in the repeated act of opening: a local audience gathers, the room darkens and the stage becomes possible.

Visit Teatre El Jardí and Sala La Cate through Figueres a Escena to experience this living cultural network in person. Attend a performance, bring younger members of the family to a daytime show, or support ATEB’s training activities. Each audience adds another moment to the long history held behind the curtain.