50th International Theatre Festival

The 50th International Theatre Festival titled ROT, will run from 24 June to 3 July 2022, directed by Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte: the programme will feature daily events with the most important protagonists ot the contemporary theatrical scene, along with the productions made in the context of the Biennale College Teatro, the training project aimed at young artists.

“We think in colour and we see the world differently” wrote Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte (ricci/forte) when they presented their four-year project. And for their second year, they chose red, Rot, in German, because “it has a hard sound, it’s a scratch, a tear that speaks of effort; it’s the sound of your teeth make as they struggle. It is blinding red, the metamorphosis of passion, it’s iconoclasm and raging fury; it is the blood that irradiates our hearts, or the mark left by the violence of crimes perpetrated… but it is also the language of forgiveness and the emotions; it’s the ancestral colour of Eros… Rot is you, your body - but you’d forgotten” (ricci/forte).

On stage for the 50th Festival will be Christiane Jatahy (Golden Lion) with the Odyssey of the migrants in The Lingering Now, Samira Elagoz (Silver Lion) and her personal migration of the body in Seek Bromance; Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson’s Big Art Group, who in Broke House intersect Chekhov and the Occupy Movement; Yana Ross and toxic masculinity in Brevi interviste con uomini schifosi by D.F.Wallace; the duo Natacha Belova and Tita Icobelli and their very special puppet art, which in Loco makes the artificial body interact with the organic body; Milo Rau, in Venice with a show – La reprise, which disrupts our perception of the world of violence – and a film cycle (The New Gospel, The Congo Tribunal, Orestes in Mosul: the Making of, Familie); the oneiric world of Peeping Tom with Triptych; the couple Daria Deflorian and Antonio Tagliarini with Sovrimpressioni which brushes tangentially against Fellini’s film Ginger e Fred; Olmo Missaglia, winner of the Biennale College Directors, who sets the lives of three millennials in a real and metaphorical forest, in Una foresta;  Antoine Neufmars and Aine E. Nakamura, winners of the site-specific performance call, will respectively bring to the stage Odorama and Under an Unnamed Flower; and further, the reading of En Abyme by Tolja Djokovic and Veronica by Giacomo Garaffoni, the plays that won the Biennale College call for authors, a production La Biennale di Venezia in collaboration with the Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa.

Late Hour Scratching Poetry is the title of the “late-night” section that evening after evening, following the performances, will feature readings from the writings of Alda Merini. With Asia Argento, Galatea Ranzi, Sonia Bergamasco and the actresses of the Scuola D’Arte Drammatica Silvio D’Amico which, under the guidance of Ranzi herself, will rise in flight to the soundscapes woven by Demetrio Castellucci.

The programme of Biennale College furthermore intersects with the festival in the cycle of masterclasses for actors, performers, dancers, playwrights, singers, video artists, directors, journalists, writers, scholars. The teachers will include: Rosetta Cucchi, Ron Howell, Francesca Dotto; Deflorian/Tagliarini; Caden Manson; Carlus Padrissa/La Fura dels Baus; Milo Rau; Andrea Porcheddu, Davide Carnevali.