The Roman festival "Short Theatre", immediately after the summer, is also a sign that the theater season is starting again, and brings to mind some reflections.
Let's start from Short Theatre. Born in 2006 as an independent festival, directed and realized in Rome by the cultural association AREA06, with the co-direction of Fabrizio Arcuri and Francesca Corona, Short has become in little more than a decade a theatrical appointment with a precise connotation and therefore also a precise relief (even if the most beautiful national festival of the past season remains "Vie" between Modena and Bologna organized by Ert): fights his small and painless battle in bringing out the languages of the scene that change, the urgencies that go through different artistic experiences, and then and a catalyst, with the format "Panorama Roma", that varied and participated in the theater world of the capital, with the few theaters that count, the social centers gradually closed, a questionable public cultural policy, do not have a center of gravity around which to confront, dialogue, develop. These and other are the reasons for the success of Short, which for the same reasons could never have been organized in Milan, where the "theatrical model" so praised, especially compared to Rome, is bringing to light another kind of magagne and begins to taste like a trap.
Here, in fact, if from the new season we expect attention to what happens, work that shows modernity, international opening, much better Reggio Emilia (Teatro Aperto al Valli) of a large city, for example. And also among the national theaters, better the "smaller" ones, Ert-Emilia Romagna Teatro (Bologna and Modena and surroundings) and Teatro Roma, each with a season not only made up of exchanges, with a single project, but, as chance would have it, the only two penalized for two years by the cuts in ministerial funding (but the commission that from the qualitative evaluations sees them the shows?).
L 'Ert, and a solid structure, and even after more than twenty years of direction by Pietro Valenti (a masterpiece his farewell with the production of Santa Estasi the project on the Atrides by Antonio Latella) held. Claudio Longhi, the new director, wants to transform: last year he worked with Pippo Delbono, he produced When the Rain Stops Falling by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli, he supported the young people of Kepler-452, Pier Lorenzo Pisano, Davide Carnevali, Emanuele Aldovrandi. This year, with Pascal Rambert, Angela Richter (who directs Antigone in the reinterpretation of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek), the great return of the genius of Christoph Marthaler with Das Weinen (Das Wahnen), Thiago Rodrigues, becomes more international. There will be the production of the "new" Latella with La valle dell'Eden, a deepening on Elias Canetti with La commedia della vanita directed by Loghi and Lino Guanciale for the first time directed for Nozze. And then Enzo Vetrano and Stefano Randisi with an essay by Latinist Ivano Dionigi, Chiara Guidi directs the Oedipus for children; Nanni Garella, Massimo Furlan, Pietro Babina, Giorgina Pi and Bluemotion, who stage Wasted by English rapper and poet Kate Tempest.
Even the Teatro di Roma is measured by the transition to a new direction, after the already positive one of Antonio Calbi: and Giorgio Barberio Corsetti has made an interesting choice with the artistic advice for the Teatro India in Francesca Corona. Rome welcomes the Golden Lion Alessandro Sciarroni with Augusto, continuing with the new work of Milo Rau at the Teatro Argentina and the hospitality of a masterpiece like that of Kornel Mundruczo, Imitation of life (not by chance passed at the Festival Vie), by the Iranian Amir Reza Koohestani. It will produce the new direction of Massimo Popolizio, another John Steinbeck of the season Furore. It hosts Valter Malosti with Primo Levi, Davide Enia, Mimmo Borrelli returns by popular demand. Space is given to less conventional shows with Zimmerfrei, Monica Demuru, Bartolini/Baronio, Fabio Cherstich. The group of female artists is remarkable: in addition to Emma Dante con Misericordia, Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli, Eleonora Danco, Giorgina Pi. Attention should be paid to the Indian experiment entrusted to five artists to redesign the spaces: Fabio Condemi, DOM- (Leonardo Delogu and Valerio Sirna), Industria Indipendente (Erika Z. Galli and Martina Ruggeri), Michele Di Stefano with mk, Muta Imago (Riccardo Fazi and Claudia Sorace).