Tent theater Rosete Aranda, Carlos V. Espinal & sons company (1900-1961)

General coordination: Marisa Giménez Cacho

Research: Francisca Miranda

Design and Programming: Alberto Figueroa

CD (Documentary Studies and Consultation Works Collection)
INBA-CITRU-National Coordination of Theater-Program for Children and Youngsters
México, 2009

In 1891, the entrepreneur Carlos V. Espinal founded his own professional puppet Company, under the name Tent Theatre Rosete Aranda, Carlos V. Espinal & Sons Company, because of his admiration of the legendary puppeteers, from whom he first takes the name and some of their sketches, and later the business name that he legally acquired in 1943. In the “Introduction” to the multimedia are displayed the essays “Long Life to the Rosete Aranda: Carlos V. Espinal Takes Control” and “From the Artesanal Production to the Use of Technology” by Griselda Berlanga, who discovers us on the stunning stage productions of the Espinal family puppet company the modernizing vocation of their schemes of theatrical creation: when they incorporate devices in their spectacles like the black camera (1937) and the gramaphone (1939), amplifying their repertoire with magic and variety numbers, or exploring new media like radio, cinema and television, where, between 1951 and 1953, they transmitted their Opera in Miniature and classical tales with puppets on a weekly basis. From the main menu one accesses the sections: “Biographies”, with buttons that display the family tree and biographical notes and photographs of Carlos Vallejo Espinal, Cristian Caballero (collaborator in Opera in Miniature) and of the Espinal Villegas family. The “Catalogs” section contains photographs of the puppets that integrate the collections of INBA (879 pieces of marionettes and equipment), of the University of Colima (71 puppets and equipment) and of Alberto Mejia Barón (74 pieces), all with tag names and numbers. In the “Timeline” section, with a temporal axis that starts in 1879, the date of birth of Don Carlos V. Espinal, until events and exhibitions of our times, we are given access to facsimiles of photographs, journalistic notes, posters and diverse documents. From the “Scripts” section, one accesses a relation of works, in alphabetical order; to the reading of original texts; and a repertoire with details about the characters, authors, adaptors, musicians, puppet designers, scenography and the wardrobe, as well as theaters and dates in which they performed. As an extra feature, the paintings “The Bullfight” and “The Circus” are included, with the puppets that appeared in the film Rosauro Castro, directed by Roberto Gavaldón (1950).