Catalinas Sur storehouse

Address: Av. Benito Perez Galdós 93 – La Boca

The Catalinas Sur group of actors is comprised of the neighbours from La Boca and they give non-profit performances every weekend. They present spectacles of typical Argentinian sainete (comic sketches) sailing through our history, our roots and specially the lifestyle, the customs and the typical characters and the life of La Boca with humour and great popular talent, directed and coordinated by Adhemar Bianchi which is the creator and soul of this project.
Its theatre is rather particular, it has a quadrilateral with a main stage accompanied by two lateral spaces for simultaneous performances and scenes which take place at ground level and in balconies which extend along two faced tribunes where the spectator has a complete vision of everything that is happening.
It owes its name to the (back then) new neighbourhood known as Catalinas Sur. There, it grew around the 80’s, thanks to the initiative of the Uruguayan director Adhemar Bianchi, who gathered with a group of neighbours due to the necessity to express their voices in an artistic way during the rough years of the military dictatorship. They began acting in squares and it became a classic their choripaneadas gatherings where an authentic phenomenon of popular art and celebration took place. The years went by and a huge store was granted to them by the city of Buenos Aires, it is where they perform nowadays. Each artistic activity has its own department where everyone works, constructs, creates and develops. The place has the following workshops: stage design, where the typical caricatured dolls and all the props used during the plays are fabricated; music of different specialties, which goes from the choirs up to the department of musical rhythms, characterized by murga and candombe (types of African music); acting and puppets show; and the administration department. No one charges for their work and everyone takes part in each of the activities that range from painting and constructing to cooking, selling and also acting.

For years they have been filling its theatre during the weekends charging a reasonable and cheap entrance that allows to maintain the place and the costs of its activity. The successful plays that have been on stage for the past years are “El Fulgor Argentino” (which is an account of the last years of the Argentinean history, told with great humour, irony, seriousness and hope) and the classic one “Venimos de muy lejos” that relates the arrival of the first immigrants who settled down in the district of La Boca and who had their own customs, yearnings, and nostalgia. All this, almost without knowing it, gave birth to the life of La Boca, a unique place in Buenos Aires.
The outer façade of the store, is comprised of giant dolls that stand out in the balconies and that show the typical lifestyle of the inhabitants of this neighbourhood, their characters and customs.