“Smooth seas do not make skilful sailors”. I read this proverb a few years ago, when I came across it briefly while reading the words of a friend; ever since then, it has remained with me, tattooed onto my brain, and I repeat it to myself in times of trouble.
It is realistic, watertight.
I think that it is one of the few proverbs to actually reflect reality. So many others that fall apart when faced by the unpredictable nature of life.
This one doesn’t
It holds its own.
It stays true to its course.
The storm that faces us creates huge waves that may carry us who knows where, dashing us against the rocks or leading us to new horizons, so if I have to choose a word that has a future in this new world, that word has to go well with the concept of destiny: So marinai (sailors) it is.
Their eyes battered by the Mistral, waiting to cry out: “Land ahoy!”. (Carlo Guasconi)

Synopsis
Two improvised sailors, Milza and Fiore di Loto, find themselves on a strange boat captained by the strange Charon, who they have never seen but who they have always trusted. However, now that their voyage is beginning to seem endless, that the fog surrounding them shows no signs of abating, and time appears to have lost all natural rhythm, their trust begins to wane.

Biography

Carlo Guasconi was born in Codogno (LO) in 1989. The began his theatrical studies with Francesca Mazza at the Società Filodrammatica Piacentina and then at the Scuola Proxima. 
After completing his studies, he joined the cast of Geppetto and Geppetto, written and directed by Tindaro Granata, a play that in 2016 won a number of awards including the Ubu Award for Best New Playwriting, the Hystrio Twister Award and the Enriquez Award. 
In 2015, as a playwright, Guasconi won the 11th Riccione - Pier Vittorio Tondelli Award with the text Essere Bugiardo, which was produced as part of the 2017/2018 season by Corte Ospitale, Proxima Res and the Riccione Award, directed by Emiliano Masala and performed by Guascioni, Mariangela Granelli and Massimiliano Speziani. 
He then collaborated as a dramaturg with the Atir company in the writing of Aldilà di tutto by Chiara Stoppa and Valentina Picello.
In 2019, together with Tindaro Granata and Ugo Fiore, he founded “Situazione Drammatica”, a cultural association for the promotion and development of contemporary drama.
(photo Alessandra Riccioli)

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa production 
in collaboration with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni

I chose “Letteratura (literature)” to clarify - above all for myself - what literature is and can be for those that take it seriously: a means to develop desire, a creator of imagination, a representation of the world. Vocation, diagnosis, projection, performance, refuge, tragic destiny, physical contact. Literature as a friend and rival, lover and assassin; literature as the hidden trap in language. Fabrizio Sinisi

Synopsis
A young man - an actor - kills himself, suddenly throwing himself off the balcony of his apartment. Two of his friends go over the events, trying to uncover the reasons for his death. 

Biografia

Fabrizio Sinisi (Barletta, 1987), is a playwright, poet and author. He made his debut in 2012 as a theatrical writer with La grande passeggiata, directed by Federico Tiezzi. His published poetry includes La fame and Contrasto dell’uomo e della donna, for which he obtained a special mention at the 2015 Carducci Award. Since 2010 he has held the post of playwright at the Lombardi-Tiezzi Company of Florence and the Teatro Laboratorio in Tuscany. He is also active in the field of music, and in 2017 made his debut at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino - becoming one of the youngest to participate - with the melologue Ravel. He regularly collaborates with the most important Italian theatres, working with the most important directors on the Italian scene. In 2017 he published Tre drammi di poesia, with which he was chosen as one of ten Italian writers for the international Fabulamundi project. Since 2018 he has held the post of resident artist at the CBT - Teatro Stabile di Brescia. In 2018, with La grande passeggiata, he received a special mention from the American Playwrights Project, and in 2019, with Guerra Santa, he won the Testori Award for Literature. He has been published in Germany by Lauke Verlag, and in the United States by Hentschker. He is a regular collaborator with Domani and Doppiozero. His works have also been translated and performed in Austria, Croatia, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.  

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa production 
in collaboration with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni

Ascolta "Katabasis di Marco Morana" su Spreaker.

Katábasis: the descent to the underworld, a voyage to Hell. The journey that Orpheus took down to Hades to find Eurydice. However, in military terms it also means withdrawal, retreat. It seemed to me to be a word well suited to the path we are currently following. We find ourselves in a new place characterised by a logic that is foreign to the world that existed before. We feel like we have crossed a threshold, and we are eager to return to the world of the living. But will we remember this descent? What memories will we hold on to? And in what manner do the powers aim to govern the story of this period?Marco Morana

Synopsis
An undefined location. He asks her questions; it seems he is trying to help her reconstruct the past. But her answers are always different. They have to always be different and credible, otherwise he will interrupt her and make her start over. Is it torture? Is it a test? 

Biografia

Marco Morana attended Michele Perriera’s Teatès Theatrical School, and then a scenography course at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
Le scoperte geografiche, directed by Virginia Franchi, has been staged in Rome, in Milan, and in other cities in Italy. He has collaborated with the STAP Brancaccio school in Rome as a writer of texts for children. In 2017, he was one of five playwrights chosen for the NDN - Network Drammaturgia Nuova project. Stormi won the Inedito – Colline di Torino award, was chosen for the 2019 Hystrio award, selected by the Italian committee of Eurodram and included in the review Il Copione directed by Ugo Fiore, Carlo Guasconi and Tindaro Granata. His study of Biografia dell’inquietudine – Dis-adattamento teatrale de Il libro dell’inquietudine di Fernando Pessoa was a finalist at the 18th edition of the Dante Cappelletti Award. The monologue Alle 20 precise was staged at the Teatro San Giorgio in Udine and directed by Maria Chiara Pederzini. In collaboration with exvUoto Teatro, he created the podcast Canto dello Schianto, on which a site-specific performance was based.
He also writes for audio-visual materials and occasionally works as an actor.

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa production
in collaboration with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni 

We are always working, often at any time and wherever we find ourselves. We are working when we publish a photograph, we answer emails in the middle of the night, and we are always available. There is no limit to what can be brought into play to ensure we are appreciated, recognised and employed. Within this scheme, Justine is an example of virtue: she is versatile, flexible, adaptable and fluid. Those who, like Justine, sell their virginity through an online auction manage to overturn the idea itself, selling and freeing themselves of something that is historically an instrument of social pressure and the pretext for a whole range of forms of violence, but which, at the same time, does not actually exist. Virginity does not exist in terms of a physical trait; it is intangible and is priceless because it cannot be owned. In fact, Justine is not selling herself, she is selling desire. In reality, there is no-one and nothing that surrounds us that does not sell desire. Our world seems to be moulded around her, and it is perhaps for this reason that Justine seems to be the only one capable of posing a challenge. On listening to Justine - and those who like her present themselves through the online agency that offers this service - we can sense the dark power that those who can buy have over those who are forced to sell, but at the same time we cannot deny the power that the vendor has over their potential clients. Tatjana Motta

Synopsis
Justine is a young woman who is selling her virginity through an online auction. Via a video, she addresses her potential customer. She dreams of having everything, of finding freedom in a single night. She is no prey. Justine moves and creates a story that entraps those who listen and want to buy.

Biography

Tatjana Motta graduated in Visual Arts and Entertainment at IUAV in Venice, and in playwriting at the Paolo Grassi Civic School of Theatre. In October 2017 she wrote the micro-drama I palazzi esplodono, Edgar compra la dinamite for the Metropolis - Promised Lands project run by the Milano Foundation. The same year saw her a finalist at the 12th Tondelli Riccione Award with the work Nessuno ti darà del ladro. Between 2018 and 2020 she was part of the permanent playwriting workshop Playstorm at the Teatro Stabile of Turin. She won the 55th Riccione Award for Theatre in 2019 with the text Notte Bianca. She was one of the artists chosen for the second edition of the Betsud international exchange programme in collaboration with El Cultural San Martin (Buenos Aires), INAE (Montevideo), Fundación Teatro a Mil (Santiago) and the Technis Karolos Koun Theatre (Athens), during which she created the Lago Carallacu Project together with Bruno Acevedo Quevedo and Guillermo Katz. In 2021 she collaborated on the project Orizzonte Postumo organised by the Teatro Stabile, Veneto. She lives in Milan.

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa productionin collaborazione with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni

Ascolta "Isola di Rosalinda Conti" su Spreaker.

I wondered whether, in this historical period in which we are faced with numerous and new - and often suffered - forms of isolation, the word Isola (island, Nt), would be appropriate as a talisman to carry forward to the world that, at some point, awaits us. I was unable to provide myself with an answer, but I recalled the sense of emptiness that overcame me one afternoon many years ago, when tourists were leaving the island and the summer was drawing to an end. I remembered how, a few days later, the emptiness gave way to things that were imperceivable if not in the midst of silence. I realised that in some way, although I have not yet understood how, I was ready to begin something new from that emptiness. Rosalinda Conti

Synopsis

On an identified and tiny island, full of people in the summer and almost completely deserted for the rest of the year, the most important celebration of the year - that of the patron saint - coincides with the last day of the summer (give or take a day, depending on the year in question). On the eve of the equinox, the live and the chatter of the three summer months reaches a bright and enveloping peak.
The day after, the island empties.
All of a sudden, the noise stops, and there are much fewer people in the streets.
I have the impression that something is emerging from the emptiness.

Biography

Rosalinda Conti completed a master’s course in Playwriting and Scenography at the Silvio d’Amico Academy. She has studied with, among others, Dacia Maraini, Fausto Paravidino and Lucia Calamaro. In 2012 she wrote Ma io per te amore mio, selected at the Rome Fringe Festival. Two of her works (Quando vai via and Le cose che abbiamo perso nel fuoco) have been published in two anthologies for the publishing house Editoria & Spettacolo. In 2013 she received a special mention for best monologue at the Offanengo film festival, with Non dimenticar le mie parole by Riccardo Rabacchi. In 2015 the work The Yellow Brick Road received mention at the Fersen Award for playwriting. In 2017 she began working with the Compagnia Habitas as a dramaturg for the play Surgèlami. In 2018 she collaborated on the writing of Io e Lei a mockumentary that was broadcast on Sky Arte. In 2019, the piece Tom received a mention at the Hystrio Playwriting Award. Since December 2020 she has been collaborating with Illoco Teatro as a dramaturg for the Catch Me project.

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa production in collaboration with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni 

Ascolta "Hollywood di Tommaso Fermariello" su Spreaker.

Why Hollywood?
For me, Hollywood is a word that represents a world, and a way of seeing the world. Hollywood is characterised by an obsession for success, a fear of failure, the nightmare of our bodies, of beauty and ugliness. It is a word that has conditioned our past, and I am therefore writing it as a way to exorcise it and eliminate it from the world to come. Tommaso Fermariello

Synopsis
Hollywood is the story of a massacre. Two youngsters burst into a provincial disco and begin to shoot; their purpose is to kill all the attractive people inside. It is the vendetta of the ugly against the beautiful. Inside the disco, we follow the account of one of the terrorists, and of a young man who is there with his girlfriend. Their stories are crossed with the voice of a young woman. She is from the same town and has become a famous Hollywood actress, and here she tells of her particular panic attack.

Biografia

Tommaso Fermariello was born in 1994 in Tradate, in the province of Varese. He studied acting at the Veneto Theatrical Academy, from where he graduated in 2016. In 2017, together with Gianluca Bozzale, Sofia Pauly and Marina Testa, he founded the company La Petite Mort Teatro. As part of the company, he has written and performed a number of shows including Money, a finalist at the Hystrio Playwriting Award, and Left(L)Over, which received a special mention at the Giovani Realtà del Teatro award. In 2019 he won the Riccione-Tondelli award with the work Fantasmi. In 2020 he wrote the video project Falene for the Veneto Repertory Theatre.
In 2021, he is one of the playwrights called on by the CSS Teatro Stabile di Innovazione of Friuli Venezia Giulia for the project Il mondo raccontato dagli oggetti.
He is part of the creative team working on Orizzonte Postumo together with Alessandro Businaro, Francesca Macrì, Tatjana Motta and Stefano Fortin, a project organised by the Veneto Repertory Theatre, for which he has written a trilogy that will make its debut in July 2021, directed by Alessandro Businaro.

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa production in collaboration with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni 

Listen "Garbo di Tobia Rossi" on Spreaker.

We are questioned by a vulnerable body, called into action by a fragile soul, in our role both as citizens and as human beings. The fragility of others offers us a silent opportunity. A peaceful challenge to probe ourselves and to plumb the depths of our humanity. Recent events have left us confused, angry and frightened. An examination of our ability (and willingness) to recognise, love and support the fallibility and the limitations both inside and outside ourselves, near and far, could be seen as a plausible and tangible exercise in recovery. One that is pleasant, even fun. Something that is not even hard to do, if we try to see things with a little delicacy (garbo in Italian, Nt). Tobia Rossi

Synopsis
Ico is spending August at the country house of his mother, who died recently, in order to plan the sale of the property. When his mother’s fox terrier runs off, Ico is forced to comb the surrounding area to find it. Encounters, places and sensations take Ico back to an image of themselves that they do not recognise (or rather are unwilling to recognise). However, an encounter with a strange “creature” lends an unexpected turn to the day.

Biography

Tobia Rossi (Ovada, 1986) is a playwright and scenographer. He trained at the CRT - the Theatrical Research Centre and at the Luchino Visconti Civic School of Cinema, both in Milan, as well as through the Short Latitudes project with Giuseppe Manfridi, Steve Waters and Caroline Jesters, and at the Venice Biennial with Mark Ravenhill. A writer of prose, musical theatre, film and documentary, he has collaborated with the most important Milanese Theatres. He won the Ndn Network New Dramaturgy Competition with Las Vegas (2012), was chosen for Tramedautore with the monologue La mia massa muscolare magra (2014) and was mentioned at the Hystrio Playwriting Award for Scena 35 with La Cosa Brutta (2016). He won the Una Commedia in Cerca d’Autore Award with Freddy Aggiustatutto (2017) and the Mario Fratti Award with Nascondino (2019).
His piece Il principe dei sogni belli (2020) was chosen by Teatro Due in Parma for the Mezz’ore d’autore project.
He also works as a story editor and writes musical theatre.

 

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa production in collaboration with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni

I think the first reason why I chose the word Fumatore (Smoker) is because I smoke. The second reason is, most likely, because I smoke, and I like it. We could even say that I smoke, I like it and I’m proud of it. 
Yes, I’m a Smoker and I’m proud. And I know I’m not alone.
The last time I saw my grandmother she was lying in bed, attached to an oxygen tank. Struggling to breathe and with a tired voice, she held my hand and spoke to me. She told me she had three regrets in life, but only one that she was truly unable to get over, one that had accompanied her for more than twenty years: the fact that she had stopped smoking. 
My Smoker is like my grandmother, he has the same tenacity, the same love of life, which is short and should be enjoyed.
Valeria Patota

Synopsis
The Smoker is a champion, an everyday hero who has to face a journey, overcoming the countless obstacles presented by a society in which he is unwelcome. His frustration is an anthem for pleasure, a cry for personal freedom. Because at the end, all we want in life is to be understood. Or at least left alone.

Biografia

Valeria Patota was born in Rome in 1992. Following an initial period as an actress, she shifted to playwriting and in 2016 she graduated as a Theatrical Writer from the Paolo Grassi Civic School of Theatre in Milan. She continued her training in Madrid, where she studied the Máster/Experto en Creación Teatral at the Universidad Carlos III under the guidance of the playwright Juan Mayorga. In 2019 she was a finalist at the “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award in Riccione with the piece Minotauropatia, which had previously been a finalist a tht eGiovanni Testori Award in Milan in 2018. In October 2019, the radio adaptation of her microdrama Waiting for Future was broadcast on RAI Radio 3 on the occasion of the 19th International Week of the Italian Language, dedicated to Italy on Stage. In 2020 she was responsible for the Italian translation of the stage play for the Spanish film Echoes by Tommy Llorens, winner of a number of international awards.

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa production
in collaborazione with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni

It was the first word that came to mind. The best of all.
It’s not even a word, it’s a person. Perhaps not even a person, but rather a character. EEE is his trademark, the melancholy cry with which he seems to want to say “that’s the way it goes”, but if necessary it can become a harrowing and shared scream. EEE changed the destiny of the Italian music industry; it is a pretext for explaining how the tiniest and most random of things can change destinies, make a mark on concerts, stadiums and relationships, and lead to epic changes.  Greta Cappelletti

Synopsis
An ordinary woman with slight rosacea flips her hair over her right shoulder. Someone notices her, she catches their attention, and the slight gesture sets in motion a chain of events that are destined to change the fate of a couple. Something like this happened to Vasco Rossi.

Biography

Greta Cappelletti was born in Melegnano (twenty kilometres south of Milan) in 1986. 
She graduated as a writer from the Paolo Grassi Civic School in 2014, and the following year she was a finalist at the 53rd edition of the Tondelli Award in Riccione with the piece Camera oscura.
In 2015 she partnered with the director and writer Liv Ferracchiati, with whom she founded the theatrical company The Baby Walk (Scenario Award 2017).
She was a finalist at the Network Nuova Drammaturgia Award with Persi, which was staged at Theatre 503 in London as part of the Italy Uncovered Festival.
In 2018 her work No Land Lady participated in the Teatro Biennial, directed by Camilla Brison, in the Directors Under 30 section, and debuted at the Roma Europa Festival in 2020. 
Her first love remains comedy, and she works with a number of artists including Fabio Paroni, Valentina Cardinali and Trejolie.
Her work is published by Editoria e Spettacolo and Cue Press.
(photo Mario Zanaria)

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa production
in collaborazione with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni

Basing the choice of a title on an assigned letter of the alphabet calls for a fair amount of trust. Not so much, I feel, in the text being written, but rather in one’s flair for association. More than a name for a type of landscape, desert (deserto in Italian, nt) is the indication of a state, of a condition. It corresponds to the idea of Abandon and, by natural contraposition, to Choice. In literature one comes to the Desert. It appears to me to be a sincere association, perhaps the most sincere I could have come up with, in order to express the cruelty and contraditory nature of the period we are currently experiencing. Riccardo Favaro

Sinossi
A home, with a family who have come together for dinner. It appears to be a dinner just like any other, habitual. The Father and Mother feel obliged to talk about something in turns, with order. Then they retire to another part of the house. Once alone, the Son and Daughter do the same. But to what home to their words belong?

Biografia

Born in Treviso on 16 March 1994. After studying the classics, he moved to Milan, where he studied and graduated as a playwright at the Paolo Grassi Civic School of Theatre. He began working immediately, handling adaptations under the direction of Giampiero Solari. He was a finalist at the Riccione-Tondelli Award in 2017. He won the 2019 Scenario Award with the play Una Vera Tragedia, which he wrote and co-directed together with Alessandro Bandini (a LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura production in co-production with Teatro i). Again in 2019 he made his debut at the Biennale Teatro with Saul, written with Giovanni Ortoleva. In 2020 he was a guest at the International Festival of Theatre in Lugano, and at the Festival delle Colline Torinesi. In the same year, he began a collaboration with Carmelo Rifici, who called on him to be part of the editorial committee for Lingua Madre - Capsule per il futuro (LAC). As part of the same project, he wrote Analisi Logica, a text in essay form which Fabio Condemi directed, as well as designing the sets and costumes. After having taken part as selected author (with Ultima Spiaggia), in 2021 he became a partner of Situazione Drammatica.

Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa production
in collaborazione with the Hystrio – Playwriting Award and the Riccione “Pier Vittorio Tondelli” Award
directed by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni
sotto gli auspici del Centro per il Libro e la Lettura