Theaters (theatres) – All our local tips

“Matadero Madrid is a lively, constantly changing space at the service os creative, processes participatory artistic training and dialogue between the arts”, as they well define theirself.

It’s an impressive reinterpretation of several buildings that were used as a slaughterhouse and meat market in the past. The architects have respected the industrial spirit, keeping the walls and the big pipes, and mixed it with materials like plastic or crystals and original decorative elements give it an absolutely avant-garde aspect.

Matadero figures can scare you. The Madrid Council has 148.350 m2 dedicated to art, design and performances… In 2009 alone Matadero organised more than 200 activities. Most of them for free!

I have visited specially “las Naves del Español”, a great theatre inside one of the buildings. They usually program big and surprising performances for about 25 euro.

At the entrance, there is a nice bar to have a beer or something to eat before or after the performance. In the different buildings and in the patio you can assist to design expos, concerts, video art shows… it’s a training place and meeting point for creators, institutions, programmers, cultural managers, critics, and synthesizing, professionals of desing and art. Matadero opens for professionals from Tuesday to Friday, from 11:00 to 14:00.

El Matadero is in the South (souther than Lavapies) but it’s relatively close to the city center if you go by underground.

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El Matadero de Madrid | Art & culture, Theaters, Festivals & events | Free
Paseo de la Chopera 14 | Lavapies & Latina | +34915177309
Tue – Fri 16:00 – 22:00. Sat – Sun11:00 – 22:00

This is a school for helping amateurs or professionals to express, communicate and feel through the theatre. I’ve been studying here  for more than three years because the teachers make it easy and funny to learn, and they are really nice, close to the students and flexible.

You can go for a free  trial lession. If you’re student you can request to use the place if you want to rehearse or play a performance. Asura is somehow specialized in clown and improv theatre (where actors and actresses create a play basing on the suggestions of the audience). In addition, Asura offers other regular courses or short workshops pointed to interpretation (in more classical way), body expression, dance, hospital clown… and even theatre courses for children.

From now to them you can also go for a free performace doing for the students as a practice with audience. I have to say that I don’t know why but in Asura there are always a great number of foreigner studens.

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Escuela de Teatro Asura | Art & culture, Theaters | Per month (3 hours a week) € 61
Abel 1 | Chamberi | +34915331565
Mon – Sat

La casa encendida (The lighted House) is a peculiar and nice ancient restored house with a beautiful roof terrace, in the city. It is a meeting place for brilliant ideas, brilliant people, where something new and interesting can happen all the time.

You can find all kinds of courses: architecture, design, town planning, gardening, languages, creativity… Conferences of several themes,  drama, season films. When the spring arrives, until the end of the summer, there are DJ music sessions in the large roof terrace with the Madrid skyline around you.

The library, with a good book collection and  opened even on Saturday until 21.30.

It´s situated in the center, between two well known districts, Embajadores and Lavapiés, and it’s a really  a peaceful island in the downtown center.

An avant-garde cultural center, essential to visit and enjoy if you want to know what´s ‘cooking’ in Madrid.

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La Casa Encendida | Art & culture, Theaters
Ronda de Valencia | Lavapies & Latina | +34902430322
10:00 – 21:30 daily

Alfil is a mix between comercial and alternative theatre. This small place in the city centre is almost totally dedicated to humour, not to expensive productions, not classic plays, but usually little and always funny performances , most of the times without another objective that pure entertaiment. Each season Alfil repeats in the program some successful performances of previous years.

There are some companies that are there every year: Yllana (they are as well the owners of Alfil), Impromadrid, Sexpeare… Some of the plays are difficult to understand if you don’t speake Spanish. However, some others, (Yllana’s plays, for example) are based in gestual theatre, so it’s not necessary know the language. The place has a bar to have a drink before the show.

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Teatro Alfil | Bars, Theaters | From € 12.00
Pez 10 | Chueca & Malasaña | +34915214541
Tue – Sun

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