From the freshest premieres to centuries-old stage works, the Museu de les Arts Escèniques de l’Institut del Teatre (MAE) has launched Escena Digital de Catalunya, the first virtual platform to group and disseminate all the information related to shows in the territory.

The space has revealed the role of the MAE to preserve and disseminate “what have been, are and will be the performing arts of the country”, details the president-delegate of the Culture Department of the Barcelona Provincial Council, Joan Carles Garcia Cañizares.

The portal also represents progress in the internationalization of the Catalan scene by sharing more than 180,000 performance records and 3,000 audiovisual files on Europeanna, the digital platform for European cultural heritage.

Escena Digital de Catalunya now includes the four catalogs of the Museu de les Arts Escèniques, which bring together more than a million and a half documents, including photographs, press articles and audiovisual material. It represents a “great step forward for the performing arts through research”, says the director of the Institut del Teatre, Sílvia Ferrando, adding that “it allows emerging creators and companies to draw on the past”.

To date, the portal is in a beta phase in collaboration with Mercat de les Flors and negotiating with the National Theater of Catalonia, before making the leap to Catalan territory.