To celebrate Liberation Day, the Piccolo Teatro di Milan has decided to collaborate with schools to create an educational video project entitled Milano Liberata. Cronaca di ore memnorabili, which will be broadcast on Sunday 25 April on the theatre’s social network profiles. The video is the final result of a process that began in January, involving students from the Virgilio high school in Milan. Under the guidance of the video maker Riccardo Frati, the youngsters were encouraged to study the history and memory of the country through personal and photographic documentation. The final result of the research is also an account of those days of Resistance, and of April 1945, which led to the liberation of Milan and the rest of Italy, presented in an original manner, with the viewpoint and sensitivity of the youngsters involved, who are of the same age of some of the partisans that gave their lives in the name of Freedom. The texts are read by the students themselves, providing a new echo to those dramatic moments that becomes the soundtrack to a video, interweaving the voices with period images, archive documentation and maps of the city as it appeared at the time, with the emotional geography of the places and the streets that served as the theatre for Resistance and Liberation.

As part of the Piccolo Smart project, the chapter dedicated to the “calendario civile” and the tribute that the Piccolo intends to pay continues and grows, motivated by the institutes roots as a public service and its identity as “An Art Theatre for All”. Upcoming dates from Italy’s popular and democratic history that the project aims to celebrate include 1 May and 9 May, as well as 2 June, near which will be brought together in a single digital presentation created in the spirit of the “Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo”, first with the series of podcasts that inaugurated PiccoloSmart, and then with the reopening of the theatres and four days of rehearsals open to the public. The spin-off of the Abbecedario will be meaningfully entitled Abbecedario Civile, and brings together three dates, three letters and three different languages: L for lavoro (labour) for 1 May, (through writing), E for Europe, for 9 May (in the form of audio/podcast), R for Repubblica for 2 June (in video form). The same playwrights involved in the “Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo” project will be called on to lend their original interpretation to these three moments in Italian popular culture (and more), divided into three groups, one for each letter.

1° maggio – L come Lavoro
The first group – comprised of Ian Bertolini, Rosalinda Conti, Christian di Furia, Tommaso Fermariello, Valentina Gamna, Carlo Guasconi, Marco Morana, Pier Lorenzo Pisano, Luca Tazzari, Michelangelo Zeno – will compose texts in whatever form they prefer, be it poetry or prose, of social importance, which they have been asked to set in a public context. The final work will have the collective name of Opera: “In our writing, we will be concentrating on the relationship between time and work. In order to create a sense of unity, we have based the structure on the parts that make up an Opera. This decision is based on the idea of time and of the rhythm of work, and on the idea of opera as an artisan product”.
Read on Medium

As part of the Piccolo Smart project, the chapter dedicated to the “calendario civile” and the tribute that the Piccolo intends to pay continues and grows, motivated by the institutes roots as a public service and its identity as “An Art Theatre for All”. 9 May is Europe Day. This date commemorates the day in 1950 on which Schuman presented the programme for economic cooperation that marked the beginning of European integration and laid the foundations for a future federal union. For this occasion, the programme of the Piccolo Teatro’s Abbecedario Civile, a project created as a spin-off of the Abbecedario per un mondo nuovo, encounters a new date and therefore a new letter and a new language. Europa in sette tempi is the audio podcast created by the playwrights involved in the project to express the E for Europe.

Europa in sette tempi
9 May
The seven playwrights Francesco Bianchi, Maria Teresa Berardelli, Greta Cappelletti, Stefano Fortin, Valeria Patota, Martina Ruggeri/Industria Indipendente and Michele Ruol present their Europe in seven parts: In the distant future, time capsules are uncovered. Each capsule is a message. Each message is an expression of what we feel Europe is. The Europe of our present, our past and our future...

Ascolta "E come Europa" su Spreaker.

Nel 1949, il 2 giugno è stato dichiarato Festa nazionale della Repubblica per ricordare il giorno in cui tre anni prima si era svolto il referendum con cui gli Italiani votarono per cambiare la forma di governo del paese da monarchia a repubblica costituzionale.

2 giugno 2022

Nel 2022 abbiamo invitato 12 concittadine e concittadini a leggere i primi 12 articoli della nostra Costituzione.

2 giugno 2021

Nel 2021, il palinsesto del nostro Abbecedario civile, progetto nato come spin-off di Abbecedario per un mondo nuovo, ha incrociato la lettera R di Repubblica. Res Publíca ha voluto immaginare la Repubblica nella sua accezione di Stato Ideale, concetto matrice di utopie quindi un luogo di proiezioni e di desideri. Sette autori (Margarita Egorova, Riccardo Favaro, Niccolò Matcovich, Tatjana Motta, Fabrizio Sinisi, Pablo Solari, Francesco Toscani) per altrettante definizioni di Repubblica, in forma di articoli o di enunciati. Sette declinazioni di un luogo interiore, immaginario ma non per questo inesistente, visitabile sullo schermo: «Il “corpus imago” che è emerso dalle scritture ha rintracciato luoghi depositari di resti, riflessi e proiezioni di utopie – come una pozza d'acqua, un barattolo curvo – spazi d'immaginario disponibili a ospitare le sette declinazioni di Repubblica degli autori.» (Alessandro Ferroni)

As part of the Piccolo Smart project, the chapter dedicated to the “calendario civile” and the tribute that the Piccolo intends to pay continues and grows, motivated by the institutes roots as a public service and its identity as “An Art Theatre for All”. Dates from Italy’s popular and democratic history that the project aims to celebrate include 1 May and 9 May, as well as 2 June, which will be brought together in a single digital presentation created in the spirit of the “Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo”, the series of podcasts that inaugurated PiccoloSmart. The spin-off of the Abbecedario is meaningfully entitled Calendario Civile, and brings together three dates, three letters and three different languages: L for lavoro (labour) for 1 May, (through writing), E for Europe, for 9 May (in the form of audio/podcast), R for Repubblica for 2 June (in video form). The same playwrights involved in the “Abbecedario per il mondo nuovo” project will be called on to lend their original interpretation to these three moments in Italian popular culture (and more), divided into three groups, one for each letter. The first event will be an “extra” part of the Abbecedario programme, in which we will be approaching the letters via a number, 25.

Res publĭca vuole immaginare la Repubblica nella sua accezione di Stato Ideale, concetto matrice di utopie quindi un luogo di proiezioni e di desideri.
Sette autori per sette definizioni di Repubblica, in forma di articoli o di enunciati. Sette declinazioni di un luogo interiore, immaginario ma non per questo inesistente, visitabile sullo schermo.
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9 May is Europe Day. The programme of the Piccolo Teatro’s Abbecedario Civile, a project created as a spin-off of the Abbecedario per un mondo nuovo, encounters a new date and therefore a new letter and a new language. Europa in sette tempi is the audio podcast created by the playwrights involved in the project to express the E for Europe.
Find out more

 

The first of May is a moment of reflection on the concept of labour. The group of young playwrights from the Abbecedario per un mondo nuovo project will create a Civil ABC, concentrating on the relationship between time and work. Each of the writers has examined on a different part of a collective work, a result of a crafting of words, a script, which in its combination of “arias”, “entr’actes” and “recitatives” - together, of course, with an “ouverture” and a “finale” - sees the varying and personal works existing in unison, following the rhythms of their respective perception.
Find out more

For Liberation Day, the Piccolo Teatro di Milano will be presenting a video project with a strongly educational aspect entitled Milano Libera. It is a story of memorable moments that will be broadcast on 25 April on the theatre's social media channels. The video is the final result of a process that began in January, involving students from the Virgilio high school in Milan. Under the guidance of the video maker Riccardo Frati, the youngsters were encouraged to study the history and memory of the country through personal and photographic documentation.
Find out more. 

From the theatre to the cinema, from traditional media to social networks, the representation of power has never ceased to be a political act with extremely important ethical, psychological and social implications.
Through a series of conversations and interventions in which different personalities from the world of culture focus on the various forms of contemporary representations of power and their ethical and psychological implications, the itinerary aims to provide an examination, from various perspectives, of the mechanisms that represent power and their repercussions in artistic language, in mass communication, in the creation of a collective perception of the meaning and values tied to an idea - or multiple ideas - of “power”.
The project will be accompanied by the screening of the play The revengers’ tragedy by Thomas Middleton, directed by Declan Donnellan, in a version specially produced to be broadcast via streaming, and  the new production by the Piccolo A German Life, by Christopher Hampton, based on the true story and accounts of Brunhilde Pomsel, directed by Claudio Beccari and starring Franca Nuti.

Z, the last letter. I chose the word Zitta (Shut up, Silent), because Z is a tricky, yet wonderful, fascinating letter. The last one.
Last, like Lisa Montgomery seemed to be, a crazed assassin but first and foremost a little girl tortured by her mother and stepfather who stifled her light, probably teaching her that life contains nothing but evil. Lisa committed a terrible murder, Lisa had always been forced into silence, suffering rape, violence and harassment of all kinds in a trailer that it is hard to imagine could contain so much suffering. Lisa was condemned to death via a letter sent to her by the Department of Justice of the State of Indiana, USA. In that letter, Lisa was defined as “dear”, and the message ended with “sincerely”, the only two words of affection that she had ever heard or read.
The team of psychologists who handled the case had repeatedly called for the pardoning of a woman defined as “the most broken in the world”, but President Trump did not accept the requests.
On the day of her lethal injection, her executioner asked Lisa if she had anything to say before dying, but Lisa, who was used to silence, to shutting up, simply answered no. (Fabio Pisano)

Synopsis
Zitta tells the story of Lisa Montgomery, a crazed assassin and a broken woman, a woman condemned to death by her State, Indiana, but who had previously been sentenced to life by her mother and stepfather, with no chance of pardon. None whatsoever.

Biography

I was born in Naples on 27 September, 34 years ago. I studied Biotechnological Sciences, gaining a scientific training, while at the same time cultivating my passion for playwriting, studying with a number of dramaturgs including Mark Ravenhill, Martin Crimp, Enzo Moscato and Davide Carnevali, and I have studied with a number of authors from the new Spanish Scene, including Esteve Soler, José Mora and Ana Valbuena. I have also had very profitable encounters with Oskaras Korsunovas, Massimiliano Civica, and Laura Curino. I have participated in a number of national competitions dedicated to playwriting, winning a number, including the “Sipario.it” award, the “Aldo Nicolaj” award, the “Salvatore Quasimodo” award, the “Annibale Ruccello” award, the “Honorable Mention for Best Original Story” award at the international ISA - Independent Shorts Awards in Los Angeles for a short film, the “Hystrio 2019” award and the Fersen award. I read a great deal of contemporary playwriting, and I believe it is necessary for writers to always follow a dark path, allowing them to explore the genre and evolve their form while staying true to their narration.

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 "Y.E.T.I. di Niccolò Matcovich" su Spreaker.

When the letters were drawn, I hoped I would be assigned a strange one, a difficult, problematic and limiting letter. This is probably because when I write “to order”, the more restrictions there are, the freer I feel within the thought structure. Y leaves little room for imagination. After a wander among the Yachts of the Yakuza, who reputedly spend time on YouPorn while eating Yoghurt produced by Yankees but purchased in Yen or in exchange for a few Yaks, I dreamt of a Yeti, one of those really big, bad a muscular ones that said choose me over and over, and the more it repeated its message, the bigger it became, until - swollen with rage and with its flames burning - it took hold of its hair head and pulled it off; it was a mask. Underneath was a normal, almost anonymous, person, who gradually deflated until he was about my size. He looked at me and said Choose me? and I answered OK, and he answered OK, and that night I found my word.  Niccolò Matcovich
 

Synopsis
It is the year 2050. The Great Frost has completely covered the planet. The cities are empty, the trapped oceans are endless sheets of ice, and the vegetation has wilted. The sun has grown cold, it seems unable to reach the planet. In the ice desert, two Ferrymen land on the Himalayas with a single goal: find the Yeti.

Biography

Niccolò Matcovich, born in 1989, is an actor and director. He graduated in Playwriting at the Paolo Grassi Civic School of Dramatic Arts in Milan in 2014 and, on returning to Rome at the beginning of 2016, he founded the company Habitas together with the actors Livia Antonelli and Chiara Aquaro. 
His directing ranges from classic prose, opera and research, while his writing focuses on the rhythm and musicality of words, as well as on linguistic experimentation. 
With Habitas, he works on contemporary playwriting and, since the summer of 2018, his production activities have been accompanied by the creation, artistic direction and organisation of CastellinAria - Festival of Pop Theatre in the castle of Alvito in the province of Frosinone. He is currently planning the fourth edition. As well as Habitas, the project also involves Anna Ida Cortese. 
In September 2020, together with Laura Nardinocchi, he won the Scenario Infanzia Award with Arturo. The play was also a semi-finalist at the In-Box Blu 2021 award. 

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

Xabaras, the father of Dylan Dog, an anagram of Abraxas, one of the names by which “the great archon”, God, or perhaps his opposite, is known. Fantasy, legend and divinity are the elements on which I built this dark tale in which Xabaras is the lead character. Pablo Solari

Synopsis
During a distant winter, that which was once known as the Piccolo Teatro is now a ruin overrun by vegetation and inhabited by a young man and a majestic black horse. Xabaras, a mysterious pilgrim, arrives at the door of the Teatro asking for shelter in exchange for precious knowledge.

Biography

 A director and playwright, he was born in 1989 and graduated in Theatrical Directing at the Paolo Grassi Civic School of Theatre in Milan in 2015. He wrote Oreste, part of the UBU award and 2016 Critic’s Award-winning play Santa Estasi: Atridi: otto ritratti di famiglia by Antonio Latella; he was responsible for the theatrical adaptation of Cavalieri di Aristofane, which was performed during the 54th Siracuse National Festival of Ancient Drama, with Francesco Pannofino, Gigio Alberti, Antonio Catania, Roy Paci and others. His directed works include: L'indifferenza; Contenuti Zero Varietà; Carapace, in collaboration with the musician Roy Paci; L'amore ai tempi dello storytelling (2020), written and directed in collaboration with the satirical group “Il terzo segreto di satira”; Elia Kazan. Confessione americana which made its debut at the 2020 Biennale of Theatre in Venice. He made his debut as an opera director with two completely original single acts for the evening 4 one-actoperas, which closed the 2019 Biennale of Music in Venice. He was a finalist in the 2019 Riccione Tondelli award with the text Woody è morto. Since 2021 he has been working with Marco Balich for Balich Worldwide shows, which produces large-scale events and Olympic Ceremonies. (Ph. Wanda Perrone Cappano)

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 "Vuoto di Francesco Bianchi" su Spreaker.

I chose the word VUOTO (emptiness) for the Abbecedario because of all the words in the Italian language that begin with V, I think it is the one that best expresses this new era we find ourselves in, both individually and collectively.
When it becomes impossible to leave the house, when whatever lies outside seems dangerous and inhospitable, the four walls of a room change.
They become the walls of the skull, and at the same time of the whole world, enclose the totality of the human horizon.
The events and people that crowded our lives no longer exist, and we are left alone with ourselves, with our own id, our own memories.
Space expands and empties, leaving us alone.
Taking my cue from these thoughts, I chose to explore the condition of emptiness that characterises one’s perception of self. Faced with a void that appears to envelop them, the character digs deep into their own memories in search of a sense to their existence, in order to escape from the feeling of loss and dissolution. How? By seeking answers from the past, in the relationship that they have had (and which has finished) with a woman, in the midst of feelings that die and incongruities that grow and fester in the fabric of the couple’s lives. The fact that his ex is the Devil in person renders the whole situation even more complex, but also perhaps more ironic.
Vuoto is a failed relationship, a disappearing world, a pact with the Devil that is impossible to sign. At least for me. Francesco Bianchi

Synopsis
A man addresses a woman while looking out of a window. The two reflect on their lives, on the end of their relationship, and on the sense of emptiness both individual and collective that characterises contemporary existence. Oh, and the woman is the Devil in person.

Biography

Francesco is a playwright, director and translator. He was born in Colleferro (RM) on 28 July 1989. He graduated from the La Sapienza University in Rome and the IUAV University in Venice, where he was also a teaching assistant (2015/2017). Since 2012 he has been collaborating with the Teatro Due Foundation of Parma as a playwright, assistant to the artistic director and director’s assistant alongside Valerio Binasco, Massimiliano Farau, Walter Le Moli, Gigi Dall’Aglio, Bruno De Franceschi, Elisabetta Pozzi and Csaba Antal. Since 2018 he has held the role of Assistant Director In Italy to Declan Donnellan at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano and in the Cheek by Jowl company. He has been writing and translating theatrical works ever since he began in the theatre, accompanying his writing with theatrical research and study in all its forms. He received a special mention at the 2016 Hystrio Playwriting Award with the work Europa, as well as a special mention at the Extrême Contemporain 2021 Award with the piece Per lei, nel giorno del suo compleanno.

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