José de Alencar Theatre
Art Nouveau playhouse of 1910 with a Glasgow-cast iron frame and a garden by Roberto Burle Marx.
Inaugurated on 17 June 1910 and named after the Ceará novelist José de Alencar, the theatre was designed by the engineer Bernardo José de Melo and built at a moment of prosperity in the cotton trade. Its most unusual feature is the prefabricated cast-iron structure, ordered from Walter Macfarlane's Saracen Foundry in Glasgow and shipped to Fortaleza in pieces. Iron columns, balconies and a ventilated iron screen enclose an auditorium of around 800 places, while the masonry front mixes neoclassical and Art Nouveau motifs.
The iron screens are filled with coloured glass in floral Art Nouveau patterns, and a painted ceiling and proscenium survive from the original decoration. The theatre was listed by IPHAN in 1964 and restored in the early 1990s, when Roberto Burle Marx laid out the garden of native plants that surrounds it. Beyond drama and dance the complex holds a second stage, a library, the Ramos Cotoco gallery, a costume store and rehearsal rooms, and it runs training programmes for young performers.
Highlights
- Cast-iron structure shipped from a Glasgow foundry in 1910
- Art Nouveau coloured glass set into the iron screens
- Garden of native plants designed by Roberto Burle Marx
- Auditorium of about 800 places, listed by IPHAN in 1964
