... the physical, worldy in-between along with its interests is overlaid and, as it were, overgrown with an altogether different in-between which consists of deeds and words and owes its origin exclusively to men’s acting and speaking directly to one another. 
Hannah Arendt, Vita activa. The Human Condition

I am not one for museums […] I prefer seeing the city, the people, the shops, the streets, the urban fabric, the colours of the suburbs, the sunrises and sunsets, understanding the humanity, equal and diverse, in the various communities.  
Paolo Grassi, Pittori e musei, in Id., Quarant’anni di palcoscenico
 

DISCOVER THE SHOWS

Is it still possible to depict the world of today through theatre? Around seventy years ago, in the same period in which, in Milan, Strehler was preparing to orchestrate, with epic mastery, his refined Threepenny Opera, a very young Peter Szondi, studying the phenomenal vitality of Berlin theatre from his eccentric observatory within the austere halls of the University of Zurich in an attempt to codify the generative (and fatally transformational) language of “modern drama”, identified, through analysis of the relations between individuals, the cornerstone of contemporary theatre. According to the Hungarian scholar, the «bold intellectual effort made by a newly self-conscious being» of the Renaissance «after the collapse of the medieval world view» led to the inescapable declaration of dominion over «interpersonal relationships» as an essential aspect of modern dramaturgy. The conclusions came swiftly: «Man», nowadays, can enter drama «only as a fellow human being»; the sphere of «interpersonal relationships» is an «essential part of his being»; «freedom and obligation, will and decision» are «the most important of his attributes». 

Szondi was right in his thinking; it is within the vibrant and impassioned debate between “you” and “I”, in the determined close combat between “you” and “us”, in the intricate mass of contradicting ties between “him” or “her” and “them” that we must doggedly continue to seek the meaning of contemporary theatre (and perhaps even its future). It is in the fissures that furtively open between interlocutors, between the fault lines that suddenly split debates, and in the suspended silence that slips between the solitude of subjects, that theatre needs to persistently dig, to shed light on the impenetrable “middle ground” in relationships, and on the abyss of fear, desire, affinity, hatred, appetite, curiosity and indifference that drives relations. This impalpable and pulsating “middle ground”, the rich hummus of our inexhaustible need to find “completion” in others, offers fertile soil for our possibility to create community, on all levels and under the most varied of forms, be it as a couple, a family, a group of friends or a city... 
 

Without ever abandoning its constant striving to explore the transformation of contemporary theatrical language in search of future possibilities, the 2025/26 season at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano marks the beginning of a journey towards celebrating its eightieth anniversary, examining the ties between the theatre and the city that formed the very basis of the founding project launched by Strehler and Grassi, beginning with a study of the most authentic and profound etymons of this fundamental bond: relationship. 
 

Following the thread of an attentive analysis of contemporary dramaturgy, the productions by the Piccolo for the coming season offer a rich catalogue of the many “expressions of relationship” that present, through incisive “portraits”, a shifting reportage of our present made up of intimate cuts into the flesh of our inmost passions and desires, as well as sweeping panoramas that blow open the deafening labyrinth of passages that wind through our cities; of more or less composed “portraits of a family at home” and of slightly faded snapshots that foster old friendships, and of fascinating glimpses of history and bold visions of “times to come”, reminding us that «the end is» always «in the beginning and yet you go on»...

And there is more: hilarious pictures that tell an improvised tale of theatre’s funambulatory play on identity; laconic sketches that draw on language to freeze a complex embrace in silence; dizzying montages that express the polyphony of eras and cultures; violent slashes to understand the wounds within memory and imagine the contours of crumbling recollections, and lastly, darkness that fatally engulfs all annihilation of diversity. “Never come between a husband and wife”, the saying goes...

And so, perhaps, in a civil dialogue between us – in the “Calvino-esque” manner of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo –, sailing from show to show, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Babylon and Utopia, beyond the mythical archipelagos of the floating isles that lie on the horizon of our future, in a deluge of “with” and “close” and “against” and “adverse” and “to” and “between” or “among”, an elegant carousel of “expressions of relationship” leads us to reach (or build?) the ideal city: For these ports, I could not draw a route on the map or set a date for the landing. At times all I need is a brief glimpse, an opening in the midst of an incongruous landscape, a glint of lights in the fog, the dialogue of two passersby meeting in the crowd, and I think that, setting out from there, I will put together, piece by piece, the perfect city, made of fragments mixed with the rest, of instants separated by intervals, of signals one sends out, not knowing who receives them. If I tell you that the city toward which my journey tends is discontinuous in space and time, now scattered, now more condensed, you must not believe the search for it can stop. Perhaps while we speak, it is rising, scattered, within the confines of your empire; you can hunt for it, but only in the way I have said...

Claudio Longhi
Director Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa

Who, today, are the “all” of which the founding motto of the Piccolo “Teatro d’arte per tutti” speaks, and in whose service we work, day after day? This is the question that Claudio Longhi and I have been asking ourselves since we began working towards our common goal. In a context of increasingly international horizons marked, periodically, by conflict, uncertainty and fragility, we are called on to stand strong in the face of fear and care for our community. Our aim is to work and exist in the present, in a responsible manner and with the belief that theatre and art make us better people. 
 

Indeed, since the very beginning, theatre has always been a place for and an expression of the community, somewhere in which it can present itself in its many forms, in the irreducible wealth of its differences and its nuances. It is this extraordinary variety, like the strands of a web, that the Piccolo aims to examine, and to which it seeks to guarantee full and unlimited access. Our theatrical community is a cross section of the city in which we live, and we believe that it should represent all citizens, Milanese or not.
 

Together with all those who work for the Piccolo, with their daily efforts, their professionalism and their responsibility, we first and foremost wish to address the children who have their first experiences of theatre thanks to educational programmes, and the young people from all walks of life, cultures and social backgrounds, to ensure that they all feel part of the Theatre of the city of Milan, and that, with us, they can explore the beauty, the wonder and the excitement of theatrical expression. This is one of the reasons that lies behind the launch of our new project, Piccolo <35, which combines opportunities for encounter and sharing with in-depth studies of the classics of theatre and explorations, together, of the new contemporary scene. Particular attention will also be dedicated to other segments of the public, through specific proposals. 

Activities related to Oltre la scena and Agorà della Cultura continue, and we also have the new Piccolo Aperto project, the goal of which is to promote practical accessibility and an all-round theatrical experience, with services aimed at removing all forms of barrier, be they cultural, architectural, sensory, cognitive or economic. 
Our city is now home to a population of which more than 20% is foreign; a “potential” audience that still rarely ventures to our theatres. “International Milanese” of wide-ranging origin and profession, as well as a multitude of young university students studying finance, fashion and design. These are joined by the increasingly numerous tourists who come, either for just a few days or longer, to explore the city. We are now working, also with the use of surtitles for weekend performances of productions and collaborations, to welcome them with new shows. 

With a view discovering, together, who the new “all” are, Autumn 2025 will see the launch of a convention together with other cultural and theatrical organisations entitled Interesse pubblico (Public interest), which forms part of the New audiences project. The support of the Founding Partners and institutional partners of the Piccolo is an essential factor for the sustainability of artistic activities and events for the public; in addition to these figures, a precious element is, now more than ever, the involvement of the Milanese, Italian and international business world that, ever since the founding of the Piccolo, has sustained the Piccolo, forming a beneficial treaty in the post-war period that contributed to the cultural rebirth of our city, and that now, through its constant and enthusiastic support, provides a powerful stimulus for innovation, including within the theatrical world. 

The Piccolo creates networks: this is its most authentic characteristic. It does so in the etymological sense, drawing on the creative power of relationships. A net is, by definition, an interweaving of threads of various material, knotted and woven together. It has always sought connections with a broad range of institutions with the common goal of cultural programming, such as the Triennale, Grande Brera and Teatro alla Scala. It also forms networks with Fashion and Design, voices that create material culture and art. One new horizon in this network, for the coming season, is Milano Cortina 2026, which will see the participation of the Piccolo as the first Italian theatre with a programme dedicated to the Cultural Olympiad, the constellation of initiatives organised around the sports event that echo its significance. 
 

This is the vision and commitment of us, here at the Piccolo, where we have learned to create a form of theatre that is, both in idea and practice, for all, for the entire community: a community for which it is the theatre’s duty to care, just as the theatre is a shared asset that the community has the duty to nurture. Both through reciprocal openness, responsibility and kindness. 
 

Lanfranco Li Cauli
Delegated General Director Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa
 

Indagine Milano is the backbone of the IMMERSIONI Festival 2025.

An artistic mapping of the city with a specific focus on 4 of its less central neighborhoods, a true immersion in contact with people and their stories, with the aim of returning 4 performative studies that will compose a heterogeneous and multifaceted look at contemporary Milan.

After the editions of 2022, 2023 and 2024 – which saw the selected artists working with communities in the neighborhoods of Baggio, Calvairate, Niguarda, Lorenteggio/ Giambellino, Quarto Oggiaro, Lambrate, Chinatown, Affori, Stadera, Barona, Chiaravalle and Santa Giulia – in 2025 we will continue the work of artistic mapping of the city by asking candidates to choose one of the neighborhoods among those indicated, territories not yet intercepted by IMMERSIONI in past years.
The goal is to involve citizens and neighborhood communities through a path of coexistence, proximity and open exchange that intercepts the associative fabric, formal and informal social and cultural networks, and proximity institutions and principals (libraries, parishes, theaters, etc...).

THE DISTRICTS: Adriano, Corvetto, Comasina, Villapizzone, San Siro, Bicocca, Gallaratese
 

The performances, the outcome of the artistic residencies, will be presented in September 2025 at the IMMERSIONI Festival to be held at the Piccolo, a project partner.
Indagine Milano seeks a direct approach with the communities of the city of Milan to bring forth from its analysis materials of contemporary dramaturgy, an expression of our intangible cultural heritage. The intention of the project is for the artist to act as a mediator between the citizens and the artistic process, bringing them closer and putting them in deep connection with each other, so that culture and art become valuable tools for metabolizing and reading contemporaneity.

The path outlined has as its overall goal the development of neighborly relations between the artist community and local communities, promoting the nurturing of social relations and analyzing the relationship between creation, public space and society.

The specific objectives are:
     ➝ to strengthen the presence of a new generation of artists nationally and internationally;
     ➝ promote the interweaving/hybridisation of dramaturgical languages: writing, physical action, video and sound;
     ➝ to solicit the cultural participation of communities, particularly those who are generally excluded from it; 
     ➝ promote a reading of the local areas that is based on listening to needs, critical issues and opportunities so as to “cultivate and grow” more knowledgeable citizens.

IMMERSIONI Festival is promoted by mare culturale urbano in collaboration with Piccolo Teatro di Milano.
Artistic director and project manager – Andrea Capaldi (founder and director of mare culturale urbano)

The project benefits from the participation of a curatorial team, formed by Federica Fracassi, Nicola Russo and Benedetto Sicca, which will have the task of flanking/supporting the work of selected artists and helping the artistic direction in building
a complex and articulated narrative where, while maintaining the specific identity of each of the 4 performance studios, a transversal fil rouge is legible that returns to the viewer and to the people involved a unique and multifaceted artistic overview.

The project also includes the involvement of four professionals in the field of textual, sound, physical and video dramaturgy – Davide Carnevali, Nicola Ratti, Alessio Romano and Riccardo Frati – in the role of “tutor dramaturg/early viewers,” with the function of assisting the artistic direction and curatorial team, so as to encourage a project where there is an important hybridization of artistic and performative languages.
 

HOW TO PARTECIPATE 
To participate in the selection you must send an email to indagine.milano@maremilano.org, no later than 11:59 p.m. on March 27, 2025 specifying in the subject line: call Indagine Milano 2025*.

DOWNLOAD THE CALL

The email indagine.milano@maremilano.org is also active from March 3 to 27, 2025 to request information and clarifications related to the call.

Comunicare senza barriere
 

Our programmes are more accessible thanks to the ListenWIFI system; a free app that allows you to listen to the audio of shows directly from your smartphone via earphones, hearing aids or cochlear implants. 
 

How to listen:
     ➝ Download the app by scanning the QR Code displayed on screens in the theatre foyer or via the links below.
     ➝ Once in the auditorium, connect to the “Listen” Wi-Fi network.
     ➝ Select the “Show Audio” channel on the App, put on your earphones (audio quality is higher with wired devices) or connect your hearing aid or cochlear implant to the smartphone and enjoy the show!

DOWNLOAD FROM THE APP STORE

DOWNLOAD FROM THE PLAY STORE

If you experience difficulty in connecting your devices to your smartphone, contact your supplier or write to alfaudio@tiscali.it
 

Comunicare senza barriere (Communication without Barriers) is a project organised by a.l.f.a. – Associazione Lombarda Famiglie Audiolesi Milano
With the contribution of the Lombardy Region and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers


     

In collaboration with

         

A flamenco of an increasingly novel and stimulating breadth that, while maintaining its essence, confirms its role as an art among arts. Now in its eighteenth edition, Milano Flamenco Festival returns to the stage of the Teatro Strehler from 16 to 20 June 2025.
 

An essential element in our programme, Milano Flamenco Festival is a precious presentation of the vibrant contemporary flamenco scene, with international icons of dance alongside the most innovative and avant-garde of emerging artists.  
 

Sin limites is the common thread of this edition of the Festival, which lends space, voice and body to the need for the artists to explore both themselves and their surroundings, with the aim of expanding the horizons of the art of flamenco and diving deep into all the nuances and possible interpretations of the most profound tradition.

Three companies will be presenting Italian premieres of their shows, challenging both the stage and their respective creative and physical abilities in an experience of significant visual and emotional impact.

Purchase two or three shows at a special price with the Flamenco Card.

As of 1 December 2024, Lanfranco Li Cauli holds the post of Delegated General Director of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa, alongside the Director Claudio Longhi. 

From December 2016 to November 2024 he served as Director of Marketing and Fundraising for the Teatro alla Scala. In particular, from 2021 to 2024, he worked alongside the Superintendent Dominique Meyer, playing an active role in the organisational restructuring, sustainability and technological innovation processes for the Theatre. In 2023 he participated in the founding of the “Teatro alla Scala Association of America”. 

He worked at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa from 1998 to 2015, a period that culminated in his appointment as Director of Marketing and Communication. In this role, he was responsible for the technological innovation process, aimed at developing and consolidating new audiences. He also managed international marketing activities for the many tours organised by the Piccolo. 

After studying the classics, he graduated with a degree in Economics and Commerce at the Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milan, specialising in Marketing. 
He is a frequent guest at conferences, courses and University Master courses on a national and international level, speaking on themes of theatrical management, marketing and fundraising. 

Since 2009 he has been a regular contributor to a range of national and international publications on the theme of cultural management. 

He has been a teacher at the Sant’Egidio Community School of Italian language and culture in Milan since 2019. 

In 2022 he was awarded “Cavaliere Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana” by the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella.

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Image from the lesson “Uno studio su La schiuma dei giorni di Boris Vian”, by Fabio Condemi. Photo © Marta Cervone 

Last updated May 2024

The theme of sustainability has never been so closely tied to cultural policy; it is with this in mind that, having become the first theatre in Europe to join the New European Bauhaus – the multi-disciplinary cultural network promoted by the European Union to serve as a catalyst for the new European Green Deal –, we are underscoring our commitment to ensuring that our stages serve as a driver for the culture of sustainability.
 

We see sustainability in its widest terms, in its representation of a relationship between the environment, the economy and society, and therefore equally related to accessibility and inclusion.

There is a wide and articulated range of initiatives that we are implementing in this regard; on a structural level, through the progressive adapting of our spaces (thanks to the NRRP and both public and private partnerships) and our equipment (with a “light relamping” project funded by the Lombardy Region with a view to favouring the use of LED technology for auditorium lighting), as well as a commitment to reusing materials both on and off stage; on a productive level, with shows created as part of the European projects STAGES - Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift and UNLOCK THE CITY!, which contributes to promoting a culture of sustainability (Benvenuti al Piccolo! Green tour of the island of trees by Michele Dell’Utri; Semidei by Pier Lorenzo Pisano), of inclusion and of dialogue with the community (Dance Me to the End of the World by Sotterraneo). 

In addition, through a series of significant collaborations and alliances: our partnership with the Politecnico di Milano for international projects (and beyond); our involvement in the Festival of Sustainable Development organised by ASviS – The Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development; our relationship with schools and libraries in Milan and Lombardy, which sees us carrying forward our commitment – previously expressed in past seasons, also through our involvement in the Affido Culturale project, organised by the Associazione Mitades and the KPMG – in fighting educational poverty; and the close collaboration with AI. Di. Qua. Artists – the first ever association of and for disabled people in entertainment – which continues to develop in multiple directions, from the training of staff to audio-description projects, and from the creation of materials and kits dedicated to people with specific needs (for example with Jérôme Bel by Marco D’Agostin, in the 2023/24 season), to the translation in Italian Sign Language (LIS) of a range of events.  

With a view to facilitating access to our programmes by an ever wider and more diverse audience, we are also increasing the number of shows with surtitles, developing specific touch tours (tours exploring show costumes and the sets for Teatro Aperto) dedicated to blind and visually impaired spectators, as well as bolstering dialogue with and attention to the many communities within the territory through initiatives spread throughout the city and the region (Teatro dietro l’angolo, Walk_Talk, etc.).

It is an ongoing and developing process, which underscores the fact that “sustainability” is much more than just a word, representing constant dialogue between areas, needs and openness.

God alone knows all the coincidences of this existence, but we alone must choose our own set of coincidences from all those possible. 
Antonio Tabucchi, The edge of the horizon

My only thought is a complicated simplicity. I like a thing simple, but it must be simple through complication. 
Gertrude Stein, A transatlantic interview

«All truth is simple» – Is that not doubly a lie?
Friedrich Nietzsche,Twilight of the idols

Referring to the Calvino of the Six Memos for the Next Millennium, and “disguising” his prophecies on the destiny of literary experience as a foretelling of the fate of the performing arts, I believe, for example, that one possibility [...] for the renewal of theatrical language [...] lies in finally also bringing to the stage the challenge that contemporary sciences, with their extraordinary developments, have set for our century’s arts [...] in relation to the strategies to be implemented in order to achieve a representation of the complexity of reality. 
Luca Ronconi, Il mio teatro
 

DISCOVER THE SHOWS

Genoa, in the Eighties, an Indian summer.
In a fatigued city, lazily looking out to sea and tinted pink by a slow plague that had invaded walls and homes, on the sidelines of an atrocious and bloody crime committed in an old building in Via Casedipinte – a dual fatal shooting – the enquiries of Spino, the coroner of the Old Hospital, unravel (and entangle). Marked implacably by the chimes of the San Donato bell tower, in a whirl of concurrent causes that widen the focus of the investigation from the domain of crime reporting to that of ontology, Spino’s odyssey though lanes and terraces, parishes and workshops, from the Old Port to Staglieno, in search of the elusive identity of Carlo/Carlito Noboldi-Nobodi-Nobody, crumbles into a dust cloud of encounters, a mist of small discoveries that gradually dissolve the arrival at the truth into a theory of points, ever more remote and ever more elusive, a secret line that curves and embraces us from afar, towards the distance, beyond the dark night sea: the edge of the horizon. 
 

In the wake of famous models, from That Awful Mess to The Name of the Rose, Tabucchi, with the striking parable of his Edge of the horizon, transforms the detective story into a scientific-philosophical-theological tractatus, presenting us, in dizzying miniature, with an elegant manifesto on the task of the artist: in the words of Calvino, «since science has begun to distrust general explanations and solutions that are not sectorial and specialised», that of being «capable of weaving together the various branches of knowledge, the various “codes”, into a manifold and multifaceted vision of the world.»

Little more than forty years separate us from the pages of Tabucchi, and faced with the constant and dizzying expansion of the space and time that we inhabit, the proliferation of possibilities that spread before us, the tangle of reason and babble that governs our actions, perhaps that metaphor of the edge of the horizon is no longer enough to express the complexity of our present; perhaps it is necessary to multiply it and weave it into a network of threads, into a mass of horizons.
 

Thus, the edges of the horizon. This is, evidently, the new frontier – better still, one of the possible new frontiers of contemporary arts – and one that is particularly theatrical.

In fact, for centuries theatre has examined the methods and forms with which to identify and represent, on stage, the chameleonic and proteiform multiplicity of reality; the strategies to adopt in order to open out the restricted space of the stage and to expand the concentrated time of performance in order to etymologically “understand” the tumultuous overflowing of modernity (and its many afters).

From Shakespeare’s system of multiple plots aimed at breaking apart the asphyxial “prison” of pseudo-Aristotelian unity, right through to the epic-scientific research of Brecht, which demonstrated clear roots in Illuminism, without, however, scorning the eccentric paths taken by Brook, with his “magical” ability for extreme conciseness, far removed from all forms of simplification. However, nowadays – in a world that, having overstepped the confines of reality, has definitively invaded the virtual, taking the global village from an witty epistemic metaphor to a concrete and unsettling daily experience, in which the “elsewhere” and the “therefore” or “then” are irremediably interwoven with the “here” and “now”, in which fakes seem to have become the other face of truth and reality is blended with stories, to the point that the mirror of theatre risks being shattered in the collision with the complexity of the present – the need to face the multiplicity, perhaps not consuming it but at least cataloguing it, planning it and examining it, has become ever more pressing. 
 

Thus, continuing the Piccolo Teatro’s examination of possible new forms of theatrical expression that dialogue with the interests of the public and the demands of the artists, the 2024/25 season of the Teatro d’Europa aims to provide a labyrinthine gallery of the multiform horizons of our time, seen from different points of view.

The projection of private lives into the lengthy field of history, or the opening or the autobiography and the “portrait of a family in an interior” to reflect the world. The adoption of the city as a theatre stage, or the overturning of the Anthropocene in an exploration of nature that goes beyond what is human. The return to the classics, to fables, to legends and to the great poems from the infancy of the world as masks of contemporaneity and its countless contradictions. The summarising of memory and its many nooks and crannies as a handbook for the creation of intrepid glimpses of the future, or the use of taxonomy “en quadrille” to highlight the ruthless strategies used to eliminate the weakest.

The list continues: the refraction of the present through the Babel of language or in the grand foundry of rhetoric, with its persuasive force; the painstaking embroidering of romantic maps of the present; the entertaining re-invention of the catastrophe theory strung between anthropology and science fiction and the didactic recording of the various forms of violence with the sole aim of, one day, banishing them from the world. Of fundamental importance, when exploring the generous cornucopia offered by the programme, are the rules of engagement for the audience. Merrily roll the dice, without fear of losing the way (whoever gets to 62, or if you want, 65, moves on to 73; and whoever gets to 24 rolls again; but if you land on 44, and realise it, miss two turns, because a pause is important).
 

Don’t hold on to one approach or one vision, but rather follow multiple periods, running unrestrained through the web of connections, the counterpoint of voices, the geometry of correspondences. Wander freely from show to show, without fencing yourself in, deciphering relations, exploring constellations, examining puzzles; bring forth images and fantasies by joining the dots like a child...

Claudio Longhi

P.S.
[…] […] Spino is a name that I invented myself and one I have grown fond of. Some may point out that it’s an abbreviation of Spinoza, a philosopher I won’t deny I love; but it signifies other things too, of course. Spinoza, let me say in parenthesis, was a Sephardic Jew, and like many of his people carried the horizon with him in his eyes. The horizon, in fact, is a geometrical location, since it moves as we move. I would very much like to think that by some sorcery my character did manage to reach it, since he too had it in his eyes. (A.T.)

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Image from the show I pretendenti by Jean-Luc Lagarce, directed by Carmelo Rifici. Photo © Attilio Marasco