Simon Senn (CH)

performance | duration 60 min

c/o ZONA K, admission allowed with membership 2024


In this digital conference that doubles as a demonstration and confession, Simon Senn, a videographer and visual artist from Geneva, demonstrates how the virtual world and the real world are not always in opposition, revealing the unexpected entanglements between technology, representation, gender, and law.

Simon Senn’s experience began when he bought the digital replica of a female body online. He then went in search of the woman whose body he was « virtually » inhabiting. Onstage he conveys this disturbing experience to the audience.

After downloading the replica (a detailed and evidently accurate reproduction), he brought it to life with easily purchased sensors and discovered what it felt like to « have » a female body – at least through his 3D glasses. The experience was moving. Who is this woman ? Can he do anything he likes with this digital body ? What about the new and enjoyable sensuality this virtual form offers him ? He managed to track down the young woman and begin a discussion with her (one that continues today), where together they investigate this third digital body that exists between them. Arielle is now part of the project and is present in the show.

Simon Senn decided to consult a psychologist and explore his feelings of «gender disturbance », which continue to surprise him – does he perhaps suffer from « Snapchat dysmorphia », the clinically accepted psychological illness of those who wish to transform themselves in order to resemble their online image?

conception and direction Simon Senn with Simon Senn, Arielle F. and a virtual body production Compagnie Simon Senn co-production Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne Le Grütli, Centre de production et de diffusion des Arts vivants Théâtre du Loup distribution and tour Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne with the support of Fondation suisse pour la culture Pro Helvetia; Fondation Ernst Göhner; Pour-cent culturel Migros; Porosus

Photo from simonsenn.com

Born in 1986, Simon Senn is an artist and theater director, and lives in Geneva. He obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Haute école d’art et de design de Genève and a Master’s degree from Goldsmiths College in London. At first glance, his work seems to suggest that he is a socially engaged artist, speaking out against a certain type of injustice. However, his works sometimes reveal a more ambiguous approach, exploring aporias rather than articulating addressed criticisms. Even if his videos or installations are normally based on a certain reality, fiction is often mixed in. Be Arielle F is his first proposal for the stage, with which he received the second Prix d’encouragement pour les arts de la scène Premio in 2019. During the health crisis of 2020, a live stream and adapted version of the show was offered digitally by the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne. In 2024, he collaborates with Indian dancer Rohee Uberoi to capture and encode the movement of Bharata natyam in their projet Rohee, to be shown in Vidy.

Zoë Demoustier / Ultima Vez (BE)

dance | duration 60 min
in English with Italian subtitles
c/o ZONA K, admission allowed after membership 2024


In Unfolding an Archive, Zoë Demoustier unfolds an image archive of 20 years of war reporting. The man behind the camera is her father Daniel Demoustier. The search for a relationship to the imagery of world events with which she grew up is like a movement from far and near. In an attempt at a reconstruction, she brings the archive to life. She dismantles the mechanisms hidden behind the archive images. Gradually, a choreography of poses and gestures is created in a broken timeline of physical memories.

« In Unfolding an Archive I investigate what news is, how journalism works, how you use images to place reality in a certain frame. But there is also a second, much more personal track: what has my father’s special job done to me? It took a long time before I dared to put that into the performance. At some point I realized I couldn’t avoid that question. And that those apparently very personal topics – how
our family functioned, the father-daughter relationship, the question of how present a parent should be – are just very universal: everyone has to deal with them. » Zoë Demoustier in HUMO

Choreography and performance Zoë Demoustier Live sound Willem Lenaerts Sound concept Willem Lenaerts & Rint Mennes Light design Harry Cole Light and technical support Pieter Kint Interview & editing Yelena Schmitz Design & Costume Annemie Boonen Research Annemie Boonen & Willem Lenaerts Dramaturgy Elowise Vandenbroecke Coaching Danielle van Vree Video and sound archive Daniel Demoustier Co-production STUK With the support of the City of Leuven, 30CC, Platform In De Maak Residences STUK, Ultima Vez, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, Voetvolk Atelier Rubigny Thanks to Shila Anaraki, Oihana Azpillaga, Jonas Beerts, Anna Bentivegna, Stijn De Cauwer, Elliot Dehaspe, Dirk De Lathauwer, Lahja Demoustier, Misha Demoustier, Hannes Dereere, Josine De Roover, Pieter Desmet, Klaas De Somer, Willem Malfliet, Hildegard De Vuyst, Silke Huysmans, Karen Joosten, Koen Theys, Maarten Van Cauwenberghe, Gerlinde Van Puymbroeck, Veerle Van Schoelant, Niek Vanoosterweyck, Bart Vanvoorden, Remo Verdickt, Cas-co Leuven, Dag van de Dans, Danstuin.

Photo by TomHerbots

Zoë Demoustier (1995) is performer and choreographer. The body is always the starting point for her visual representations. From movement she makes links with topical and committed subjects to create documentary choreographic work. Zoë made the performances nesten (fABULEUS/Anna Bentivegna & Ayrton Fraenk), Road to Nowhere (Forsiti’A/Yelena Schmitz), Born to be wild (Thespikon) and worked as a performer and assistant with Kabinet K, Michiel Vandevelde, Alma Söderberg/Manyone, Iris Bouche/Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, David Weber Krebs and Marcelo Evelin. In 2021 she was ambassador of Dance Day in which she created tomorrow’s dance makers in collaboration with De Zendelingen. From 2022 she will start a new collaboration as a choreographer at Ultima Vez. Unfolding an Archive is her first solo performance, for which she has already initiated within the Directing course at the RITCS and Cultural Studies at the KU Leuven. In the performance she uses techniques from the mime corporel tradition that she learned during her studies at the Mime Education in Amsterdam. For Unfolding an Archive she works closely with musician and sound designer Willem Lenaerts.

Anagoor (IT)

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.

proiezione con live set elettronico | durata 50/70 min

c/o Teatro Out Off, via Mac Mahon 16

A fine replica si terrà l’incontro con la compagnia e la giornalista Ira Rubini (Radio Popolare Milano).


Un Grand Tour nelle zone buie del cosmo, lì dove scaturiscono insieme la tenebra e le sofferenze delle generazioni, il rapporto dell’uomo con la natura, con l’eros, con i compagni animali, con il tempo e con la tecnica, con l’assoluto: l’impossibile. Sotto il nome del demone che tentò Faust, Mephistopheles, Anagoor raduna il materiale video raccolto tra il 2012 e il 2020 in un unico viaggio per immagini attraverso le lacrime del mondo, musicato in un live set elettronico da Mauro Martinuz. La materia cinematografica di spettacoli teatrali come Lingua Imperii, Virgilio Brucia, Socrate il sopravvissuto, Faust, Orestea, è composta da immagini profeticamente raccolte nei musei e nei templi, nelle case di cura per anziani e negli allevamenti intensivi, tra macellai, pastori e pellegrini, in India, in Iran, ad Olimpia, sulla ferita campagna veneta e sul Vesuvio. L’enorme quantità di materiale inedito trova nuova composizione in questo volo e caduta in forma di concerto cum figuris. Un concerto per immagini sul mondo, l’umano e l’animale, la violenza contro i corpi e il profitto in un’opera che ben mostra la visione estetica e politica della compagnia. Un’opera-film dove l’immagine che scorre trova il suo movimento nel suono live di Mauro Martinuz per condurci in un contemporaneo fuori dal tempo: quello dei corpi e della loro devastazione, dei soprusi di un capitalismo sempre più accelerato che nega le stagioni, il paesaggio e i sentimenti. Uomo contro natura ma anche uomo contro uomo. Mephistopheles eine Grand Tour è un film “mondo”, un gesto politico di consapevolezza.

scritto e diretto da Simone Derai musica e live set Mauro Martinuz montaggio Simone Derai fotografia Giulio Favotto assistente alla regia Marco Menegoni riprese Giulio Favotto, Simone Derai, Marco Menegoni coordinamento organizzativo Annalisa Grisi management e promozione Michele Mele produzione esecutiva Centrale Fies / Laura Rizzo, Stefania Santoni produzione Anagoor 2020 coproduzione Kunstfest Weimar*, Theater an der Ruhr**, Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee / Museo Madre***, Centrale Fies, Operaestate Festival Veneto in collaborazione con Fondazione Campania dei Festival – Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, Villa Parco Bolasco – Università di Padova

*supportato dal Ministero dell’Ambiente, Energia e Protezione della Natura della Turingia;

**supportato dal Ministero della Cultura e della Scienza della Renania Settentrionale – Vestfalia;
*** finanziata da POC Regione Campania 2014-2020.

Vai a ECOGLA XI Un omaggio presuntuoso alla grande ombra di Andrea Zanzotto

La compagnia Anagoor è fondata da Simone Derai e Paola Dallan a Castelfranco Veneto nel 2000, configurandosi fin da subito come un esperimento di collettività. Oggi alla direzione di Simone Derai e Marco Menegoni si affiancano le presenze costanti di Patrizia Vercesi, Mauro Martinuz e Giulio Favotto, Monica Tonietto, Gayané Movsisyan, Massimo Simonetto mentre continuano a unirsi artisti e professionisti che ne arricchiscono il percorso e ne rimarcano la natura di collettivo. Il teatro di Anagoor risponde a un’estetica iconica che precipita in diversi formati finali dove performing art, filosofia, letteratura e scena ipermediale entrano in dialogo, pretendendo tuttavia, con forza e in virtù della natura di quest’arte, di rimanere teatro. Dal 2008 Anagoor ha la sua sede nella campagna trevigiana, presso La Conigliera, allevamento cunicolo convertito in atelier e dal 2010 fa parte del progetto Fies Factory di Centrale Fies – art work space. Michele Mele e Annalisa Grisi completano il team seguendo management e curatela del progetto artistico.

Miriam Selima Fieno/ Nicola Di Chio (IT)

Multimedia participatory show | duration 75 min


at ZONA K
To participate it is required to request the 2023 card at least 24 hours before the show
Do it instantly, click HERE


Through a dialogue which oscillates between the theatre and the document, where live narration founds itself on audiovisual narration, two adolescents confront themselves: Giorgia, an Italian 14 year old girl, speaks of her everyday life as a European which lives in a flourishing time of peace, in which however lies the pain of a family war; Abdo a young Syrian refugee approaches Giorgia to the knowledge of another war: the one made of bombs, missiles and explosions under which from 11 years live thousands of his compatriots in Syria. 

The spectators are invited to delicately enter a private and lacerating world in together with the protagonists who, through electronic devices and personal materials, accept to expose a live elaboration of their biography and the privileged and painful aspects which have marked their stories up to this day. The show goes after the search of a balance between a personal story and a epochal story, in an intensely emotive fresco where technology enlarges like a magnifying glass our present and opens gashes on worlds after all not so far, reveals the faces of war, enters inside homes and shows their fragments, memories and possible futures. 

Concept and direction Nicola di Chio, Miriam Selima Fieno on stage Abdo Al Naseef Alnoeme, Giorgia Possekel dramaturgy Miriam Selima Fieno virtual scenography and light design Maria Elena Fusacchia videomaking Nicola Di Chio, Miriam Selima Fieno, Abdo Al Naseef Alnoeme, Giorgia Possekel archive video Hazem Alhamwy miniature realisations Ilenia Lella Fieno sonorous space Antonello Ruzzini production Tieffe Teatro Menotti, Bottega degli Apocrifi with the support of CSS Teatro Stabile di Innovazione del FVG / Dialoghi – Residenze delle Arti Performative a Villa Manin 2022_2024, Qui e Ora Residenza Teatrale, L’ Arboreto Teatro Dimora di Mondaino, Teatro Giovani Teatro Pirata / AMAT, Zona K in collaborazione con Mishwar Ong.Vincitore Premio YOUNG&KIDS 2022 FIT Festival Lugano Menzione Premio Scenario Infanzia 2020 Vincitore Bando Alte Marche Creative 2021

Nicola di Chio and Miriam Selima Fieno are actors, directors and authors. They graduate from Civica Academia d’Arte Dramatic “Nico Pepe” di Udine. Together they work since 2011 in the area of performing arts creating contemporary dramaturgical pieces which space from fiction to non fiction. The realise the shows “Lybia. Back home”, “Human Animal”, “RealItaly”, “Cantare all’amore”, “La protesta”. They win the Bando Ora! of the Compagnia di San Paolo, the Premio Scintille, the Bando Funder35 of Cariplo, the Bando Hangar Creatività di Regione Piemont, the Bando Next, the Premio In-Box. Through the years they receive important recognitions, realise reviews and festivals, conduct formative courses. From 2018 they conduct their work towards documentary theatre defining a new road of real cinema, facing topics linked to geopolitics, human rights, West and Middle East relations. They work with actors, musicians, children, refugees, journalists, and creat pieces which intercept not only different disciplines like theatre, cinema and music, but also distant artistic and cultural identities. With new documentary shows “Fuga dal’Egitto” and “From Syria: is this a child?” They win the bando IntercettAzioni, the Bando Movin’upm the prize Young&Kids at the Fit Festival di Lugano, the mention at the Premio Scenario Infanzia, the bando Alte Marche Creative. Currently they are busy with the realisation Syrian director Hazem Alhamwi’s new film in the writing of their first feature film. 

Mammalian Diving Reflex/Darren O’Donnell (CA)

– NATIONAL PREMIERE –
A ZONA K and Triennale Teatro Milano project

Participatory multimedia performance with the use of 3D visuals for 30 spectators | duration 90 min | the performance is characterised by an intense presence of smoke

at ZONA K


With nostalgia we watch  that little red dot in the night sky and we stupidly dream of restarting, as if problems on earth are resolved more easily at -65º and with the help of high doses of cosmic radiation. Combining live and virtual reality performance, The Last Minutes Before Mars invites us in to enter the world of a group of youngsters to meet their families and friends and spend some time in spaces precious in their lives. This acts as a background to the meetings with the other strangers present in the room, in a collective experience which reflects on the recognition of everyone being part of the same journey, in motion towards the same direction – independent of what happens to us -; now, hundreds of years in the past and beyond, in a future to terrifying and attractive to imagine.

Ideation and direction: Darren O’Donnell co-direciton: Chiara Prodi co-ideation team: Darren O’Donnell, Konstantin Bock, Alice Fleming, Tina France, Sorcha Gibson, Thule Can Den Dam, Sara Guttadauro, Sara Ben Hamouda, Andrada Ciccotto, Fjoralba Qerimaj, Jerwin Mostiero, Morena Marra, Craig McCorquendale, Genny De Leon, Elisa Fasiello, Mervin Kyle Fajardo, Fi Nicholson, Gianluca Benvenuti with: Sara Guttadauro, Sara Ben Hamouda, Andrada Ciccotto, Fjoralba Qerimaj, Jerwin Mostiero, Elisa Fasiello, Mervin Kyle Fajardo executive producers: Alice Fleming, Ryan Lewis, Virginia Antonipillai associate producers: Craig McCuorquodale music: Isola Music thanks to: Stephen O’Connell, Letizia Gozzini (ITAS Giulio Natta).

The last Minutes Before Mars was originally co-comissioned a coproduced by ZONA K and Triennale Milano Teatro, in collaboration with the ITAS Giulio Natta di Milano and with the support of the Canada Council of the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council e the Ambasciata del Canada in Italia.

Guided by Darren O’Donnell, Mammalian Diving Reflex is a company founded in Toronto in 1993. After having distanced itself from a more traditional theatrical setting to move towards more socially engaging practices focused on performance. Creating shows to research the contradictions to transform into aesthetically brilliant experiences, the Mammalian always look to overtake themselves and the public with ideas and sensations, leaving intuition to lead the way.

Darren O’Donnell is a novelist, essayist, dramaturge, filmmaker, performance director, artistic director and founder of Mammalian Diving Reflex. His mission is the one to give life to a social tissue which deeply integrates culture and cultural institutions, increasing their capacity for social response. In 2000 he won the Pauline McGibbon Awards for direcion and was nominatod for numerous Dora Awards of Toronto for writing, direction and acting, winning, alongside Naomi Campbell, for the project While Mice. His work with the Mammalian company entered in the top 100 of the Yerba Beuna Culture Centre in 2016. He has been nominated twice for the german BKM Preis Kulturelle Bildung and New York’s Ellen Stewart inagrual prize.

Photos © Paul Blakemore

Silke Huysmans & Hannes Dereere (BE)

– Season preview 2023 –

multimedia performance with English and Italian subtitles | duration 60 min

A meeting with the company will be held at the end of the performance on Friday 24 February.

c/o Out Off Theatre, via Mac Mahon 16


‘We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the bottom of the ocean.’ This statement is often heard when talking about the deep sea. Worldwide, only 10 percent of the ocean floor has been mapped and explored. At a moment in history when the planet we live on seems to have been explored extensively, some places remain unstudied and untouched.

After their acclaimed performances Mining Stories and Pleasant Island, Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere present the final part of their trilogy on mining. This time, they focus on a completely new industry: deep sea mining. With resources on land becoming increasingly scarce and overexploited, mining companies turn towards the ocean. In the spring of 2021, three ships gather on a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean. One of them belongs to the Belgian dredging company Deme-Gsr. Four kilometres below the sea surface, their mining robot is scraping the seabed in search of metals. On another ship, an international team of marine biologists and geologists keep a close watch on the operation. A third ship completes the fleet: on board of the infamous Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace activists protest against this potential future industry.

From their small apartment in Brussels, Silke and Hannes connect with the three ships through satellite. Each of the ships represents one pillar of the public debate: industry, science and activism. Through a series of interviews and conversations, an intimate portrait of this new industry emerges. The piece is an attempt to capture a potentially pivotal moment in the history of the earth. How much deeper can mining companies dig, and what are we as humankind actually digging towards? What are the challenges and risks? What opportunities potentially lay ahead?

by & with Silke Huysmans & Hannes Dereere dramaturgy Dries Douibi sound mix Lieven Dousselaere outside eye Pol Heyvaert technique Korneel Coessens, Piet Depoortere, Koen Goossens & Babette Poncelet production CAMPO coproduction Bunker (Ljubljana), De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam), Noorderzon – Festival of Performing Arts and Society (Groningen), Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zürich), Beursschouwburg & Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), PACT Zollverein (Essen), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris) & Festival d’Automne à Paris (Paris) residencies Kunstenwerkplaats, Pilar, Bara142 (Toestand), De Grote Post, 30CC, GC De Markten & GC Felix Sohie special thanks to John Childs, Henko De Stigter, Patricia Esquete, Iason-Zois Gazis, Jolien Goossens, Matthias Haeckel, An Lambrechts, Ted Nordhaus, Maureen Penjueli, Surabhi Ranganathan, Duygu Sevilgen, Joey Tau, Saskia Van Aalst, Kris Van Nijen, Vincent Van Quickenborne & Annemiek Vink thanks to all conversation partners & the people who helped with the transcriptions 

Silke Huysmans studied acting at the KASK School of Arts Ghent and Hannes Dereere theatre science at the University of Ghent. With their performances, the two Brussels-based artists investigate the use of journalistic and documentary elements within theatre. Underlying their work is extensive field research, which they use to shape their projects. Since 2016, they have been working on a trilogy involving long-term research on mining. For the first part entitled Mining Stories (2016), Silke and Hannes returned to where she grew up in Brazil. In 2015, a dam explosion flooded this place with toxic mining waste, causing one of the biggest ecological mining disasters in recent history. Mining Stories received the main prize at the Zürcher Theaterspektakel 2018 (Switzerland). From 2019 is the second part, Pleasant Island. In this performance, the tiny island state Nauru holds a mirror up to the whole world. Nauru was once a paradise in the Pacific. After decades of colonisation and mining, this island finds itself in grave danger, literally up to its neck in rising sea levels. Out of the Blue concludes the trilogy and premiered at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in May 2022.

Babilonia teatri (IT)

– Season preview 2023 –

show-concert | duration 75 min

c/o Out Off Theatre, via Mac Mahon 16


On 25 January 2011, the Egyptian revolution began, which within a few days led to the ousting of Mubarak. One of the triggers was the killing of Khalid Said by two policemen, who was guilty of asking the reason for a sudden search of him inside an internet café.  Khalid Said was beaten savagely and then taken to the barracks where he was tortured and killed. His body will be found lifeless in the middle of a street.

On 25 January 2011 in Tahrir Square was Ramy Essam, known in Egypt today as the voice of the revolution. Ramy in the square was singing for Khalid Said, for all the Khalid Saids, who before and after Khalid Said suffered the same fate. Ramy sang to depose Mubarak and, to this day, has never stopped singing against the successive regimes in Egypt.

Since 2014 Ramy has been living in exile, he can no longer set foot in Egypt, an arrest warrant for terrorism hangs over his head. The arrest warrant makes no reference to his art or the content of his songs, but it is clear that the Egyptian regime does not in any way welcome the call for freedom and justice for his people that he sings endlessly, and that the accusation of terrorism is completely unfounded.

Ramy’s songs, in Egypt and beyond, everyone knows them, his videos reach 10 million views, but he, for his people, cannot sing.

Not one note. Not a word. His mouth must remain shut. He can only connect with those who follow him through a screen.
Ramy has opened our eyes. Every day Ramy asks us questions and demands answers.

Questions that alone we did not have the words to formulate, but which today, working on stage side by side with Ramy become deeply concrete, deeply human, deeply political, deeply authentic.

With this performance we want to give voice to these questions.

What does the state mean. What justice means. What power means. What police means. What is process. What legality means. What constitutes incarceration. What means torture. What public opinion means. What journalism and freedom of information means. What responsibility, humanity, strength means.

To tell it, with us, will be the voice of those who, like Ramy, live every day on their skin what dictatorship means. Ramy will sing and shout it with the grace, poetry, anger and nostalgia of those who pay a high price every day, exile, for their choices.

We want to expose the hypocrisy of certain politics. We want to tell how and to what extent the reason of state is ready to trample underfoot the inviolable rights of man, repeatedly enshrined in international conventions that, in practice, remain a dead letter. We want to question ourselves on our weakness. About the weakness of a state that does not know how to give transparent answers. We want to tell how our being free citizens in a free state encounters and clashes with the dynamics of victim and executioner. With dynamics that harm, offend and play with people’s dignity. We believe that this is never acceptable and that it is always worth repeating with strength and determination.

In order not to stop being free citizens in a free state.

by Valeria Raimondi and Enrico Castellani with Ramy Essam, Enrico Castellani, Valeria Raimondi, Amani Sadat, Luca Scotton lights design Babilonia Teatri/Luca Scotton stage direction and video design Luca Scotton
production Teatro Metastasio di Prato

Babilonia Teatri is a group that has entered the contemporary theatre scene with a decisive step, distinguishing itself for a language that has been defined as pop, rock, punk. The founders of the group, Enrico Castellani and Valeria Raimondi, compose dramaturgies with a unique pace, a sort of litany carved out of the contradictions of today, brought to the stage with a rebellious attitude. 
They have investigated different angles of provincial life, crystallising it as a microcosm of a universal pain, tackled with desecrating courage. Courage that earned the group the prestigious Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale. Babilonia Teatri is characterised by its irreverent and divergent gaze on today's uncovered nerves. For an unconventional style that understands theatre as a mirror of society and reality. Through the use of new visual and linguistic codes it expresses the need and urgency of questioning, to bring out conflicts and tensions, with irony and cynicism, affection and indignation.

ECONOMY

This is the era of the “globalization of the world”, with a single worldwide market. The capitalization success on a global scale affirms that such a big economic revolution never existed.

However this system needs to take in consideration the three problematic phenomena that it may bring: inequity, instability and the environmental cost. These consequently may bring to an ecology crisis, globalization, consumes and social inequality.

According to the capacity or incapacity to get to a solution of the three critical factors, however, it seems incontrovertible that economic growth is a prerequisite to reach a more equal income distribution, given a stability to the system and a full respect for the environment.

“How would you then favor an economic growth that is both durable and sustainable?”

In 2018 the Nobel Prize for the Economy was assigned to Nordhaus and Romer, for their studies that highlight a strong relationship between macroeconomic trends, climate change and new technology. They also bring to the light the contradictions in the capitalism paradigm, underlining the necessity of political decisions in the long hall.

In 2019, with our seasonal theater, we decided to aim our goal into the economic world, to all access and distortion caused by money, to the society influenced by it, to the rebellious and victimized environment, to the technological innovation producing both economic development and social implosions.

ECONOMY is our answer to a complicated science of development models we superficially know and to a present moving so fast we can’t keep up with.

Four focuses, MONEY, SOCIETY, ECOLOGY and TECHNOLOGY. These are four aspects that we retain to be closely related to the interpretation of international artists and Italians that, like us, do not stop questioning the present.

In addition, the year 2019 strengthens the collaborations with numerous urban realities. A further confirmation of the strong necessity for a shared cultural economy. Therefore, the relationships between Teatro delle Moire/Danae Festival, Triennale Teatro dell’Arte, Teatro Franco Parenti, Stanze – esperienze di teatro d’appartamento, Olinda/TeatroLaCucina, Stratagemmi/Prospettive Teatrali, Laboratorio Lapsus, mare culturale urbano e Fattoria Vittadini are confirmed.

 

 

 

FOCUS TECHNOLOGY

On the date of December 31, 1982, Isaac Asimov wrote in the Toronto Star newspaper. He narrated about how the world would have been in 2019. The focus being on if humanity will have survived a nuclear war, or how technology and IT innovation would have radically changed our way of living and working. The people of 2019 would have just been working on developing and studying implications of Artificial Intelligence and its applications.

Surely, for so many aspects he was right. Nowadays, AI is already part of our reality: domotic or home automation, siri, autonomous vehicles, robots. Are all of these simply tools that can guarantee people more free time and freedom or could they become dangerous antagonists of humankind in a near future? Is it possible that a machine develops wishes and could be looking for its own power or to substitute its own creator?

Scientists and experts are divided, some see such dangers as very probable, while others as not possible. We are not taking a position on this, but we are focusing on how smart technologies are already significantly affecting our life and how we interface with the world.

Is it all just about economic benefits, simplifications, working opportunities not possible before? Or should we also account for the fact that, under the surface of the friendly AI, there are hidden algorithms that already control the vast majority of the global financial transactions……social networks, news credibility, our world vision, as well as the mood – positive or negative – of billions of human beings, that can forecast human behavior and, based on such data, send out personalized promotional ads, manipulate minds, suggest actions to humans unaware of it all” (Luca De Biase)?

 

8 – 10 November 2019
ZONA K, CODICEFIONDA + AGRUPACIÓN SEÑOR SERRANO
PLAY ME (ORIGINS PROJECT)
[performance]

22 – 24 November 2019
CLAUDIO TOLCACHIR (AR)
PRÓXIMO

A ZONA K and Teatro Franco Parenti project
[show] c/o Teatro Franco Parenti

SPECIAL RESIDENCES TECH

  • 21 – 22 November 2019
    CINZIA PIETRIBIASI (IT)
    PADRE D’AMORE PADRE DI FANGO
    [show]
  • 29 – 30 November 2019
    KOKOSCHKA REVIVAL (IT)
    YOU FIGHT!
    [show]
  • 6 – 10 December 2019
    IMAGINOMETRIC SOCIETY(IT)
    THE MILAN EXPERIMENT
    [performance] c/o Sala delle adunanze dell’Istituto Lombardo, via Brera 28 

 

FOCUS PEOPLE

The power of people, of ordinary people. The authentic strength and drive that comes from below. “People have the power”, “Power to the people”, songs and slogans from the 1970s that still endure in a world so different from that time. And yet, in spite of everything, people still think that they have the power to change the world.

PEOPLE tells of the strengths and contradictions that permeate our society: the strength of feelings, the exchange between generations, the relationships of solidarity; but also the relationships between individuals where power games become more ambiguous and sometimes ruthless. Above all, it talks about people: young people, teenagers, curious women, independent, aggressive but always and in any case topical.

Events:

26 April – 19 May 2018
Mammalian Diving Reflex / Darren O’Donnell (CA)
TEENTALITARIANISM with 3 dates + 1

23 – 24 May 2018 h. 20.00
Guinea Pigs (IT)
ACTS OF WAR
[show]

25 May – 10 June 2018 h. 10.00 – 19.00
Barbara Miele (IT)
FOREVER YOUNG, THE DREAMS OF SIXTY-EIGHT
[photo exhibition]
In collaboration with PHOTO FESTIVAL MILANO

30 – 31 May 2018 h. 20.00
Marta Dalla Via (IT)
POLITICAL PENTOTHAL – Rap opera for Andrea Pazienza
[show]

5 – 6 June 2018 h. 20.00
She She Pop (DE)
SPRING SACRIFICE
[show]
A project ZONA K and Teatro Franco Parenti

 

Opera retablO (CH)

Köszeg, loosely based on Ágota Kristóf’s The Big Notebook, tells of identity, separation, of a humanity condemned to the limit, to the edge, and of its great capacity for resilience.

The protagonists of Köszeg are two brothers, indivisible and interchangeable as if they had only one soul. Two small adults with prodigious intelligence who, thanks to the logic of survival, develop a crystal-clear and brutal ethic of life. Around them move characters drawn with a few bare strokes in a context of hunger and death.

A hard performance where everything is made fierce and essential by a clear and direct acting. In the succession of images, always poised between adulthood and childhood, Köszeg proposes, through a strong resonance with current events and migratory flows, a raw, touching story that leaves no room for digressions and where love, war, violence, fragility, clandestinity, emigration, identity and loss of identity are the protagonists.

 

A creation: Opera retablO Director: Ledwina Costantini by and with: Ledwina Costantini and Daniele Bernardi costumes: Caterina Foletti scenography: Opera retablO and Michele Tognetti Production: Opera retablO in co-production with Teatro Sociale Bellinzona with the support of: Swisslos/ Pro Helvetia / Tognetti- auto/ Carthesio SA

 

Opera retablO was founded in 2008 in Sessa (Canton Ticino) and is a space that hosts and promotes artistic and cultural contaminations, born from the need to provide the creations of Ledwina Costantini, an actress-creator from Ticino, with a network of collaborations and an organisational and logistical structure. Opera retablO proposes creations poised between the innovative and the archaic; works that give substance to a modern and destabilising catharsis. The association’s activities take place nationally and internationally.

EXTRA FOCUS

The Extra Focus category brings together those proposals that we have intended to welcome in the season but which due to theme or calendar (for both of these shows this is the case) cannot be included in the thematic focuses.

 

EXTRA FOCUS events

cancelled for health reasons of an actor
CAFFETTIERA BLU
Bluemotion (IT)

[show]

19 – 21 May 2017 h. 20.30
KÖSZEG
OPERA retablO (CH)
[performance].

25 May 2017 h. 20.30
INFLUENZA
Floor Robert/InQuanto teatro (IT)
[performance]

 

 

 

ISOLA E SOGNA

A report in the form of a concert on Giusi Nicolini, Mayor of Lampedusa until June 2017, and the exercise of power on the island of landings and turtles, a place that has become an emblem of the border, a showcase for the representation of European policies. Of the hand that heals and the hand that strikes. His defeat at the last elections inspired dozens of articles in the newspapers and thousands of comments on the web. In Isola e Sogna, Ateliersi poetically confronts the prospects of this change, starting with the semantic shifts produced by Nicolini in her five years as mayor.

On the island, local opposing factions coexist, not without difficulty, on a human level, geopolitical contrasts linked to colonialism, events, contemporary imagery and the desire to pursue a life of fishing, tourism and peaceful hospitality.

“Everything suggests that Lampedusa is a lit brazier. / That talking about Giusi Nicolini in Lampedusa is now unseemly.”

Isola e sogna brings to the stage the heated words of the inhabitants of Lampedusa, of Giusi Nicolini*, of those who described her and those who described her island; and makes it a matter of rhythm, timbre and opposing senses.

* Valuable among the sources, the book/interview with Marta Bellingreri Lampedusa. Conversazioni su isole, politica, migranti (Edizioni Gruppo Abele, Turin, 2013).

 

by and with Fiorenza Menni and Andrea Mochi Sismondi and with Giorgia Sangineto and Marco Mochi Sismondi music by Vittoria Burattini (percussion), Mauro Sommavilla (electronics, guitar) and Vincenzo Scorza (electronics) sound by Vincenzo Scorza technical direction Giovanni Brunetto administration and organisation Elisa Marchese planning and communication Tihana Maravic

 

Ateliersi is an artistic production collective working in the field of performing arts and theatre. It deals with artistic creation and the cultural programming of Atelier Sì in Bologna. Ateliersi’s creations are made up of theatrical works and artistic interventions in which the performative gesture enters into an organic dialogue with anthropology, literature, musical production and the visual arts in order to encourage a communication of thought capable of intercepting anxieties and perspectives that coagulate meaning around the subversions manifested in the world.

Welcome Project (DE/IT)

Intime Fremde/Intimate strangers is dedicated to a reflection on the border, identity, the concept of nation, country of origin, the encounter/clash of physical and cultural, emotional anatomies.

Europe has accustomed us to travelling cheaply and feeling at home in all the countries of the Union. But the old continent defends its borders with barbed water and C.I.E. Borders exist hidden everywhere: while we go shopping, when we look at each other, skim, avoid, in the covered face of the neighbour, in the smells in the stairwell. And what is behind a door, behind a line has always scared us. If it is true that we are all biologically similar, it is also true that we are all culturally different, and endowed with different rights. Are we made up of what we eat, of our experiences, of the decisions we have made throughout our lives, of what we love, of what we fight for?

What is identity? What does nationality mean? What does citizenship mean?

 

Intime Fremde is a space in which to look at the fears and desires of a humanity divided between the need to belong and the need for freedom. On stage three actresses who live in Germany, but who have three different cultural origins, build barriers and look for spaces of intimacy.

The show had two residencies at Teatro del Lemming and premiered on 20 November 2015 at the Acker Stadt Palast in Berlin.

 

In English, Italian and Arabic.

 

With Aurora Kellermann, Lina Zaraket, Serfiraz Vural directed by Chiara Elisa Rossini lights Alessio Papa by Welcome Project – The foreigner’s Theatre production Teatro del Lemming in collaboration with TATWERK PERFORMATIVE FORSCHUNG_Berlin

 

 

Welcome Project is a female project born in Berlin in 2015 from an idea of Chiara Elisa Rossini. The group is made up of four female artists who live in Germany but have different cultural origins.
Its name comes from their personal experience as emigrants, but also from the concept of theatre as a world governed by other rules, a space where things out of the ordinary can happen.

FOCUS RIVOLUZIONARI

A focus dedicated to the civil commitment of small and great social revolutions, to those who in the past and today have believed or still believe that things can be radically changed.  At the same time a focus that looks at experiments in artistic languages that may contain revolutionary elements.

A photographic exhibition recounting the underground movement that led to the Arab Spring of 2011.
A meeting-concert with its direct witnesses.
A review of two young companies that, in the many difficulties of this country, struggle to emerge, but with tenacious will make their revolution continuing to invest energy and money in their art making.

 

6 May 2015 h. 18.30

Arabian Knightz, Gianmarco Maraviglia, Emanuela Mirabelli, Chicco Elia
L’HIP HOP E’ RIVOLUZIONARIO
[incontro]

to follow

Showcase Arabian Knightz c/o Leoncavallo
[concert]

 

06 – 21 May 2015 h. 10.00/19.00
Gianmarco Maraviglia/Echo Photo Journalism
EGYPT – UNDERGROUND REVOLUTION
curated by Emanuela Mirabelli
[photographic exhibition]

07 – 08 May 2015 h. 21.00
Woodstock Teatro
SPRING BOY
[play]

 

12 – 13 May 2015 h. 21.00
Compagnia Stradevarie
BANDITE 
[play]