The Stage of the Meeting
The Stage of the Meeting.
project
About us
Teatro dell’Argine is a theatre company of 3 directors, 3 playwrights and about 20 actors and theatre teachers.
Our 220 seats Theatre, ITC Teatro, is located just outside Bologna. There we carry out our own productions, house performances of other companies, and offer dozens of workshops for children and teenagers.
Year after year our activities have become a point of reference for a community of thousands of people (most of all young people) looking for means to reflect about the world and to meet culture and experiences belonging to far-off countries.
To meet their demand:
1) we choose performances dealing with important current events, and social and civil subjects, such as the violation of civil rights all over the world (for example, dealing with immigration, with the exploitation at work, the war in Balkans, the dictatorship in Argentina, etc);
2) we form groups of young people who inquire into particular themes through theatrical activities (studying for example life conditions in Palestine);
3) we invite foreign theatre companies (both of professionals and non professionals) who are using theatre in order to get over very difficult situations (for example, Parada Foundation from Bucharest, which supports street urchins, or Bazi Theatre from Iran);
4) we invite foreign artists (for example from Bolivia) to work together with our troupe and with students attending our workshops;
5) we have formed a permanent company of immigrants in Italy requesting political asylum.
Aims of our project
We would like to begin a cooperation with people engaged in political, cultural, social and artistic projects in distant communities. Our aim is to gather stories from real everyday life of the community or of its members.
From these stories outwards, our company would like to create theatrical performances.
That’s why we ask you to send us so many stories you like to, upwards from 10 lines.
Typology of stories
Stories coming from everyday life.
From its problems.
From the necessity of withstanding.
From the will to have a better future.
From the fight against injustice.
From the sorrow you feel seeing the negative effects of today world on the community and its members.
From the need for dreaming and escaping a too hard situation.
From the love for children and old people.
From the social condition of women.
From friendship, brotherhood, solidarity rising from difficult circumstances.
From the rage against violence and exploitation.
As political and social accusation.
From a collection of works written in the schools of your community.
Languages
We can easily translate from Arabic, French, English, German, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Production and aims of the performances
Teatro dell’Argine will later choose some stories to product theatrical performances.
To do that, we will e-mail the representatives of the communities whose stories have been chosen to be transformed in performance. E-mail exchange will be used to ask questions, to study content and context in depth, to update the story-sender about how the project is going ahead.
Performances could be carried out:
1) with school students attending our workshops, with the following aims:
- to put on performances and to give the profits to the community who sent the story, to support educational projects;
- to promote a twinship between the Italian school and the school of the community who sent the original story;
- to organize a festival where the above-mentioned performances are staged, to show the educational work of your community
2) with Italian actors, writers and theatre directors, with the following aims:
- to product performances and to stage them in Italian theatres (the profits of the first night will be given to the community who sent the story)
- to organize a festival in Italy where all the performances stemming from your stories will be staged.
Internet Site
Also the stories which won’t be used for our performances will be published on the internet site illustrating the projects.
On this site you’ll be able to:
a) look up all the texts collected, and their translation;
b) communicate with Teatro dell’Argine;
c) spread your stories inserting them in a readers’ and associations’ net.
Production of a DVD
Moreover, we plan the production of a DVD where famous Italian actors will perform the chosen stories. This aims to let the people know the life conditions of the reference community, and to give the project national interest.
Please let us know soon if you are interested in our project!
If you have questions to ask, or stories to tell, e-mail us!
Our address is: archivio@argine.it
Dear...
I’m writing you because I’d really like you to participate to an important project which is right now being developed by Teatro dell’Argine (Bologna), a theatre company with whom I’m cooperating.
In attachment the description of the project.
I’ll personally add just few lines.
While travelling, both the members of Teatro dell’Argine and I often meet exceptional cultural mediators, people who are a sort of centre of the work of a community, often representing its historical memory, its voice; people who can tell stories which have never been told before and are never banally literary; people engaged in artistic, cultural and social micro projects.
As we decided to collect tales stemming from far-off countries, we were all thinking about these people. We aren’t interested in being “place” for collecting tales of extra-European literature (collections like that already exist - also really worth collections).
Through the “exchange of stories” we hope to strike up a relationship with these people, with these story tellers, with their community, with the projects they are working at; we want to create a framework to connect and share, a useful framework both for us and for the communities we are addressing.
That is to say, we aren’t looking for emerging writers or “literary revelations”, but for people like us, wanting to share stories in order to fulfil and strengthen their projects and research.
At first, a community will receive the stories of another community: we find it interesting that the first step is this meeting – the first step to know each other, to communicate, to help each other.
At the same time, we are conscious that these stories haven’t got a merely didactic or cognitive value: they have a universal, absolute value. We trust these stories to be the ground of excellent theatre.
That’s why we’ll ask about ten young interesting actors-authors, directors, and playwrights, to work on these stories turning them into scripts, texts and performances able to return the deep meaning of a relationship with different cultures. We want to outline a renewed world map, distant from the current dominant stereotypes.
You will probably ask: which kind of stories? I just want to say: we aren’t looking for folklore, nor for a strictly anthropologic work. Your stories will be at first performed in Italy: we are sure your lives can communicate also with people living here, that they can be interesting for them, they can make them reflect, and understand that all the stories and situations in this world are closely connected, that you can’t know yourself if you don’t know the other.
We are interested in present stories too, such as in reporting, texts stemming from interviews, or study the relationship between your community and the West... because Western culture is continuously present in your countries, whether in meeting or in crashing, exactly as your culture is present in our country, through the experience of the immigrants, their way of living, their opinions.
For further information about the project please read the attachment. If you have questions, my colleagues of Teatro dell’Argine and I will be glad to answer you.
For now, I just thank you, very much. Please let me know if you are interested in our projects: I’d be very to work together with you.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Best wishes
project
About us
Teatro dell’Argine is a theatre company of 3 directors, 3 playwrights and about 20 actors and theatre teachers.
Our 220 seats Theatre, ITC Teatro, is located just outside Bologna. There we carry out our own productions, house performances of other companies, and offer dozens of workshops for children and teenagers.
Year after year our activities have become a point of reference for a community of thousands of people (most of all young people) looking for means to reflect about the world and to meet culture and experiences belonging to far-off countries.
To meet their demand:
1) we choose performances dealing with important current events, and social and civil subjects, such as the violation of civil rights all over the world (for example, dealing with immigration, with the exploitation at work, the war in Balkans, the dictatorship in Argentina, etc);
2) we form groups of young people who inquire into particular themes through theatrical activities (studying for example life conditions in Palestine);
3) we invite foreign theatre companies (both of professionals and non professionals) who are using theatre in order to get over very difficult situations (for example, Parada Foundation from Bucharest, which supports street urchins, or Bazi Theatre from Iran);
4) we invite foreign artists (for example from Bolivia) to work together with our troupe and with students attending our workshops;
5) we have formed a permanent company of immigrants in Italy requesting political asylum.
Aims of our project
We would like to begin a cooperation with people engaged in political, cultural, social and artistic projects in distant communities. Our aim is to gather stories from real everyday life of the community or of its members.
From these stories outwards, our company would like to create theatrical performances.
That’s why we ask you to send us so many stories you like to, upwards from 10 lines.
Typology of stories
Stories coming from everyday life.
From its problems.
From the necessity of withstanding.
From the will to have a better future.
From the fight against injustice.
From the sorrow you feel seeing the negative effects of today world on the community and its members.
From the need for dreaming and escaping a too hard situation.
From the love for children and old people.
From the social condition of women.
From friendship, brotherhood, solidarity rising from difficult circumstances.
From the rage against violence and exploitation.
As political and social accusation.
From a collection of works written in the schools of your community.
Languages
We can easily translate from Arabic, French, English, German, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Production and aims of the performances
Teatro dell’Argine will later choose some stories to product theatrical performances.
To do that, we will e-mail the representatives of the communities whose stories have been chosen to be transformed in performance. E-mail exchange will be used to ask questions, to study content and context in depth, to update the story-sender about how the project is going ahead.
Performances could be carried out:
1) with school students attending our workshops, with the following aims:
- to put on performances and to give the profits to the community who sent the story, to support educational projects;
- to promote a twinship between the Italian school and the school of the community who sent the original story;
- to organize a festival where the above-mentioned performances are staged, to show the educational work of your community
2) with Italian actors, writers and theatre directors, with the following aims:
- to product performances and to stage them in Italian theatres (the profits of the first night will be given to the community who sent the story)
- to organize a festival in Italy where all the performances stemming from your stories will be staged.
Internet Site
Also the stories which won’t be used for our performances will be published on the internet site illustrating the projects.
On this site you’ll be able to:
a) look up all the texts collected, and their translation;
b) communicate with Teatro dell’Argine;
c) spread your stories inserting them in a readers’ and associations’ net.
Production of a DVD
Moreover, we plan the production of a DVD where famous Italian actors will perform the chosen stories. This aims to let the people know the life conditions of the reference community, and to give the project national interest.
Please let us know soon if you are interested in our project!
If you have questions to ask, or stories to tell, e-mail us!
Our address is: archivio@argine.it
Dear...
I’m writing you because I’d really like you to participate to an important project which is right now being developed by Teatro dell’Argine (Bologna), a theatre company with whom I’m cooperating.
In attachment the description of the project.
I’ll personally add just few lines.
While travelling, both the members of Teatro dell’Argine and I often meet exceptional cultural mediators, people who are a sort of centre of the work of a community, often representing its historical memory, its voice; people who can tell stories which have never been told before and are never banally literary; people engaged in artistic, cultural and social micro projects.
As we decided to collect tales stemming from far-off countries, we were all thinking about these people. We aren’t interested in being “place” for collecting tales of extra-European literature (collections like that already exist - also really worth collections).
Through the “exchange of stories” we hope to strike up a relationship with these people, with these story tellers, with their community, with the projects they are working at; we want to create a framework to connect and share, a useful framework both for us and for the communities we are addressing.
That is to say, we aren’t looking for emerging writers or “literary revelations”, but for people like us, wanting to share stories in order to fulfil and strengthen their projects and research.
At first, a community will receive the stories of another community: we find it interesting that the first step is this meeting – the first step to know each other, to communicate, to help each other.
At the same time, we are conscious that these stories haven’t got a merely didactic or cognitive value: they have a universal, absolute value. We trust these stories to be the ground of excellent theatre.
That’s why we’ll ask about ten young interesting actors-authors, directors, and playwrights, to work on these stories turning them into scripts, texts and performances able to return the deep meaning of a relationship with different cultures. We want to outline a renewed world map, distant from the current dominant stereotypes.
You will probably ask: which kind of stories? I just want to say: we aren’t looking for folklore, nor for a strictly anthropologic work. Your stories will be at first performed in Italy: we are sure your lives can communicate also with people living here, that they can be interesting for them, they can make them reflect, and understand that all the stories and situations in this world are closely connected, that you can’t know yourself if you don’t know the other.
We are interested in present stories too, such as in reporting, texts stemming from interviews, or study the relationship between your community and the West... because Western culture is continuously present in your countries, whether in meeting or in crashing, exactly as your culture is present in our country, through the experience of the immigrants, their way of living, their opinions.
For further information about the project please read the attachment. If you have questions, my colleagues of Teatro dell’Argine and I will be glad to answer you.
For now, I just thank you, very much. Please let me know if you are interested in our projects: I’d be very to work together with you.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Best wishes