2021 Archivi | Fondazione AIDA

(In)different Journey

Starting from the book “The Tale of the Unknown Island“ by José Saramago, Portuguese writer, Nobel Prize for Literature, in the various steps of the Indifferent Journey project we will develop new expressive methodologies to be applied in the experience of and with disabled people.

Thanks to the involvement of various professionals working in the theater sector, in the rehabilitation area and a group of people with intellectual disabilities, they will work together to develop theatrical practices and new methods of physical and sensory stimulation. These are activities that facilitate and encourage these people to assume a greater sense of belonging and usefulness in society, encourage the development of intrinsic and latent capacities; and at the same time, they affirm the right to active citizenship.

The project is supported by Erasmus +

Goals:

Develop and deepen the use of new skills and methodologies; train technicians in the artistic areas of theater, body and musical expression; train learners in the artistic areas of theater, body and musical expression; promote social inclusion; sharing good artistic practices with people with disabilities; promote entrepreneurship and pro-activity of technicians, students and organizations.

Steps:

First step of the project: September 2021 – first meeting in Hungary with all partners involved. Organizational management of the two years of the project.

Second step: October 2021 – second transnational meeting with all the partner organizers of the project in Verona. Development of theatrical techniques with professionals in the sector to experiment workshops with disabled children.

Third step: November 2021 – January 2022 – Alice Canovi, theatrical actress of the AIDA Foundation is developing theatrical and musical workshops with children suffering from autism spectrum disorders

Fourth step: February 2022 – third European meeting in France with all partner organizations and disabled children (beneficiaries of the project)

Partners:

In addition to Italy, represented by the Aida Foundation in collaboration with the Foundation “Autismo Trentino”, the following participate in the project: Glocalmusic – Portugal, (project leader), Atipick Dream – France, MSMME (Magyar Specialialis Muveszeti Muhely Egyesulet) – Hungary, SAREM (Genclikte Spor Sanat ve Egitim Dernegi) – Turkey, Teatterimuseo – Finland.

The participants and recipients of the project will be people with disabilities, who will go on to develop artistic activities, together with the organizers and educators.

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Antigone Project

The Antigone Project was created to raise awareness on Gender Based Violence and prevent it through school theater workshops. It’s a project based on participatory theater techniques, aims to allow and give tools to secondary school teachers from all over Europe, to be able to organize theater workshops in order to raise awareness of the GBV in their classroom. To achieve this, the project will develop a manual in relation to the organization of school workshops with all the necessary information, which will allow teachers in their schools to use the theater method independently. Based on this manual, we will develop training material and organize online and face-to-face courses for teachers in all partner countries.

Goals

Develop a method focused on the application of theatrical methodologies to talk about issues related to gender-based violence with a specific focus on the role of the teacher; to integrate the use of participatory theater as a method of raising awareness in relation to gender-based violence; develop the skills of teachers to independently use prevention interventions focused on participatory theater in order to raise awareness on gender-based violence; develop resources to allow independent use by teachers and educational operators after the end of the project.

Steps:

First step – October 2021, first transnational meeting in Budapest
Second Step – from November 2021 to February 2022, organization of a refresher course for teachers about raising awareness on gender-based violence through theater workshops
Third Step – January 2022, second transnational meeting in Belgrade
Fourth Step – from February to March 2022, online course held by university teacher and workshop in the presence of the performer and actress Marta Tabacco

Partners:

In addition to Italy, represented by the AIDA Foundation, the following participate in the project:

Udrujenije Gragdana Dah Teatar – Centar Za Pozorishna Istrajivanja,
Serbia (project leader);
Theatro Aeroploio – Ena Theatro Giapaidia (Greece);
Action Synergy SA (Greece);
Association of Young Psychologists in Bulgaria (Bulgaria);
Insite Drama Oktatasi, Kulturalis es szolgatato non profit korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag (Hungary);
Hogskulen Pa Vestlandet (Norway);
RealStars (Sweden)

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Fundraising campaign for Teatro Onlife

With the ongoing health emergency, theatres, as well as many other spaces of aggregation and culture, have closed leaving a huge void. Teatro Onlife wants to be a valid and structured alternative to the physical space of the theatre, a new way of doing and enjoying this art form, with the spectators at the centre.

Which will also be useful when the theatres open.

We will develop a specific software platform that will enable the theatre, and especially children’s theatre, to break the traditional patterns of representation and enter a new, innovative, virtual dimension.

The project represents a challenge that Children’s Theatre is taking in combining three different subjects

the actor with his performing and pedagogical action
the audience, in particular the children’s audience, including children with disabilities
the digital system

The challenge is to keep alive and constant the denominator that makes a live performance a unique and interactive event, creating new audiences by meeting on a dedicated digital platform.

How to support the project?

with a bank transfer or cheque benefiting of the Art Bonus (i.e. you will receive a tax credit equal to 65% of the donation)
through the crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe

How Teatro Onlife develops

We will develop several innovative technologies. The ones that in 90 days will allow us to go on stage in a more structured way than the experiments done so far are:

The creation of the web platform that will host the different virtual spaces (each one corresponds to a show).

In order to create this platform, a team of experts will identify the Minimum Viable Product, that is, the tool that will allow us to identify the simplest version in terms of effectiveness and immediacy and that will offer the main functionalities (called “core”) of Teatro Onlife.

At the same time, a web and app development team will focus on the creation of two other functional tools of the product: the app for children and the editorial platform.

App development

It will allow the spectators, children and young people with parents and grandparents, to interact during the show (with emoj, with predefined drawings, etc.). This phase will be followed by a team of people qualified in web development and app development. In this way the show will be able to use resources such as films, drawings, graphic elements or audio files that can then be reproduced and used by the actors and spectators. As the platform will be managed via multiple remote servers, shows can be run simultaneously with participants connected from any location. Parents will be able to set up their children’s accounts, book shows and monitor the progress of the shows via the website, while children will be able to access them via the tablet app.

The online publishing platform

Directors and actors will contribute to the creation of the palimpsest, i.e. the structured programming of events to take part in. This part consists of the:

virtual space with graphics, backgrounds and sounds, programming of visual and sound effects (we will animate the different virtual spaces)
broadcasting of the story on the day and at the times set by the schedule, execution of the storyboard and real-time management of interaction with the children.

Who will do what?

To carry out this phase, we will select a design team composed of a children’s theatre director, a child psychologist, a child illustrator, a web designer, a systems engineer and an organisational coordinator.

With the development of these technologies, Teatro Onlife can go on stage.

Realisation time

90 days

Planning start: 22 March 2021

Experimentation in the summer period

Platform launch in the 2021/2022 theatre season

When will the public be able to use it?

Teatro Onlife will become a permanent activity and structure that will complement more traditional theatre programming.

Teatro Onlife performances will be available to the public from the 2021/2022 theatre season: we will coordinate in-person performances and Onlife events, which will be open to a wide, unrestricted audience.

Why?

Teatro Onlife is a new and innovative way for children to experience theatre.

It does not replace the in-presence experience. It complements it and will be an opportunity to look to the future!

Pippi Longstocking

“You are a liar PippiLongstocking, but as a poet is. You never lie about feelings and above all about existence, but rather you invent stories simply out of a desire to tell, because you are generous.”
Pino Costalunga

The show

Exactly 75 years ago, Astrid Lindgren gave her daughter Karin, for her ninth birthday, the storybook of the strange little girl with the upturned pigtails who lived all alone in a big house. And so PippiLongstocking was born. Direction and adaptation by MarinellaRolfart and PinoCostalunga. Sets, costumes and puppets by TjåsaGusfor, one of Sweden’s most important set designers, who has recreated her own micro-world: a sort of fantastic miniaturisation where the puppets (guided by the actors in full view, not hidden as in puppet theatre) are the real protagonists of the scene.

The show narrates the story of Pippi, a little girl who is absolutely out of the box, and her friends through their carefree eyes. Pippi’s story unfolds from her arrival in the old house, Villa Villacolle, with a little monkey with the strange name of Mr Nilsson and a horse set up on the veranda, to her adventures with Annika and Tommy, her neighbours and playmates, in a colourful and amusing setting. The character’s traits have inspired many Swedish bestsellers, including LisbethSalander from Stieg Larsson’s Millenium saga.

During the production, Olof Nyman, the husband of Karin, Astrid Lindgren’s daughter and representative of the heirs, reviewed the dramaturgy of the text and confirmed its authenticity. Karin herself participated in the general rehearsals, approving its authenticity and confirming its distribution in Italy.

Director’s notes

PinoCostalunga, talking about this character, says: Thank you Pippi because you have shown that imagination, the ability to dream and invent is really the most important thing. You are a liar, PippiLongstocking, but as a poet is. You never lie about feelings and especially about existence, but rather you invent stories simply out of a desire to tell, because you are generous. (…) You have never hidden from children that there is evil and suffering in the world (…), but you have always said everything with sympathy and sweetness through the power of your crazy inventions.

The Wizard of Oz

The show

Dorothy, a child who lives in Kansas with her uncles, is thrown by a sudden cyclone in a country populated by strange characters.She lands in the village of Succhialimoni, some bizarre little men who thank her for having killed the wicked Witch of the East, crushed by the fall of the house.

Her only thought is to return home, but it seems that the only one who can help her is the Wizard of Oz.Along the way that will lead her to the Wizard, Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion.Dorothy’s new friends think they have a void to fill, so they need the intervention of the Wizard of Oz.The Scarecrow believes he needs a brain, the Tin Woodman a heart and the Lion of courage, while Dorothy wants nothing more than to return to her country.

During the journey, each of them, facing their fears to overcome the obstacles they will encounter along the way, will show that they already possess what they thought they lacked.

Turning directly to Baum’s text, we tried to highlight the most “fantastic” aspect linked to that experience through which we all went through.

That dangerous and tortuous path which is growing up, becoming great.

It definitely takes brain, heart and courage!

Director’s notes

“The journey that little Dorothy makes to the country of Oz, together with her little dog Toto and the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion, is not only a journey that starts from Kansas (that is, from a real state in America ) to arrive in a fantastic country, but it is also a journey into Fantasy and with Fantasy. And what can be better, in a theatrical show, than using the THEATER to undertake this wonderful journey? Can it be done? Imagine on stage those strange machines that, at that time when there were no computers or speakers, were used precisely in the Theater to reproduce sound. The beautiful wind machine, for example, a kind of windmill rustling wood on a canvas, or the thunder machines, sheet metal plates hung on a wooden easel. Imagine that those machines are also capable of making you discover different places a little at a time and of knowing how to create colorful and fantastic landscapes. Immagine the character of the story that jump out as if by magic from the old twisted ropes or from the old dusty trunks. Then imagine in that Theater three actors who start playing with those objects that have become beautiful puppets and with those machines full of magical and mysterious sounds and effects. Three actors who use not only the word, but also and above all the body with its rhythm and its thousand possibilities. A game very similar to what children play. This will be our theatrical game, a game that today’s children sometimes seem to have forgotten. Which has been replaced by all those electronic “devilry” – useful in the theater as they are often also useful for children – but which seem to have dulled the imagination and creative force of our “I child”, both in theater and in life. A show with actors and puppets on stage, suitable for everyone from 4 years old. ”

Pino Costalunga – director

One of the most beautiful fairy tales for children, taken from the famous story by L. Frank Baum which retains its charm intact over time.A wonderful journey, in that dangerous and tortuous path that is growing up, becoming great.It definitely takes brain, heart and courage!

Peter and the wolf

Three bungling actors stage, or rather try to do so, the well-known musical fable “Peter and the Wolf” by Sergej Prokofev.

Already from how complicated the first problems begin, because the three have not really studied!

They are therefore forced to improvise and invent odd ideas, seeking the complicity of the public, to find their way around cats, ducks, wolves, horns and clarinets.

Fortunately, the figure of the Great Narrator reigns undisputed and, with his voice, guides them safely along the path of the fairy tale.

But the three actors, a bit of a clown and a bit of an art comic, are so distracted and confused that they don’t follow the story well.

They try to make risky predictions about the fates of the protagonists of the fairy tale and often will have to ask the children for help to better understand the story and allow the Great Narrator to continue.

Like curious children, the three actors will try to reinvent the characters: “How will the character of the wolf change if instead of entrusting him to the horns we make him play the strings?”.

And playing together with the audience in an imaginary orchestra, they will discover that in “Peter and the Wolf” the important thing is that the invented story comes to terms with music and its various expressive moments.

Prokofev wrote his musical fairy tale with a specific educational purpose: to introduce children to the instruments of the orchestra, their sound and their expressive character.

This is why he associated a character and a particular musical motif to each instrument.

The narrator of the show, “the Great Narrator”, is the voice of Dario Fo who, with his theatrical genius, revisits the original fairy tale giving it a new youth.

On stage the three actors use jokes and gags to build a bridge between the story and the audience.

Their confusion becomes a pretext to point out and underline important didactic passages.

The mechanism of complicity with the public makes it so that the children themselves explain, playing the role of teachers for these three little students.

Every little spectator can therefore, in moments of interaction, give help, clarifications and suggestions, thus becoming the protagonist of a learning path.

Show inspired by the musical fable of Sergej Prokofev, recorded by the Verdi Orchestra of Milan courtesy of the Amadeus magazine, with the unforgettable voice of Dario Fo in the role of the Great Narrator and the scenes and illustrations by Emanuele Luzzati

Show also available in English

Cipì

The show

Cipì is a sparrow that stands out from his peers for his desire to explore the world. Even from birth, the nest is too small for him. His mother’s advice is not enough to curb his curiosity: the desire to know the world is always stronger than any prudence. And yet this rebellion of his leads him to measure himself against great experiences and challenges. He discovers the beauty of nature, the value of friendship, learns to defend himself from men, from the lord of the night (an owl) and from the storm. In the end, he becomes a father and teaches his children to be diligent in order to remain honest, to be good in order to be loved, to open their eyes wide in order to distinguish the true from the false, to be brave in order to defend freedom.

The book

Cipì was born in the 70’s, within a precise pedagogical path, founded on the respect of the child and on the freedom of learning. In the show are developed themes related to the formation of the child. The curiosity and the desire to be oneself, which sometimes requires a little transgression and the refusal of homologation. The fundamental role of parental education, which must leave the child free to learn through experience and stimulus to growth. But if, on the one hand, the staging led by Selene Farinelli does not betray the themes dear to Mario Lodi, on the other hand it uses the traditional techniques of figure theatre to investigate its possibilities in the digital world. In fact, video projections and a software, specially created by Stefano Piermatteo, allow the actors to animate the characters in real time according to the stop motion technique, modifying the illustrations to be composed and animated live.

Were has my shadow gone?

Where has my shadow gone is a story of friendship to learn that even if you are different (sometimes only in appearance), there is always a way to overcome everyday differences and disagreements and become truly friends.

The proposal is part of the Teatro Onlife project, it is written and performed by the actress and director Mariangela Diana, one of the finalists of the Hystrio Award for vocation in 2019.

Once upon a time there was a child who just couldn’t stand his shadow. He was called Pin and his shadow, well, it was called Shadow. Its shadow copied it from morning to evening. If he didn’t brush his teeth before going to sleep, not even the shadow brushed them and his mother got angry. He didn’t get mad at Shadow, only with Pin!

Shadow’s life was easy while Pin’s was very difficult!

Because Shadow tried to be like him but she was too different. She wasn’t quite like Pin, and he was tired of having her in, indeed under his feet!

One day Pin found a way to get it out of his sight.

On, Off and the mystery of the missing cake

You all know that in every self-respecting home there are always elves.

“How can it be? – some of you might ask me – if I’ve never seen them? ».

I guarantee it! It is that the elves are very good at hiding, not being discovered, and that’s why you’ve never seen them!

Two Goblins also live in the house of the Reds: On and Off. The Reds, of course, have never seen them, but they know that they are there and if something disappears or if you hear strange noises, they are very ready to blame to those two nice beings a bit magical and a bit pranksters.

In fact, that day when the cake disappeared from the refrigerator, Mr. Rossi was immediately ready not only to accuse the goblins, but he also decided to call the DAF, that is the Anti Kobold Disinfestation, to eliminate them from the house.

What could our poor friends, On and Off, do to save themselves? The only way was to improvise as investigators for a day and find out who was the real culprit who had stolen the cake.

After a series of suspicions, searches and mysteries, the culprit is found, but…. This is a surprise, because the ending will be really very very…. Magical….

If you want to come and help On and Off to reveal the MYSTERY OF THE DISAPPEARED CAKE, we are waiting for you on January 31st at 4.00 pm.

What to bring during the show

Also in this Onlife Theater show, to encourage participation and interaction, children are asked to bring a series of objects. In this case:

any headdress

Artistic cast

Pino Costalunga has been working for 40 years as a director, playwright and actor for the theater for adults and children and with reading and entertainment projects. He is a member of the regional coordination of professional readers LeggiPerLeggere. For many years he has been a guest of several national festivals with projects related to reading aloud; is a permanent presence of the Mantua Literature Festival
Mariangela Diana, an expert actress in the children’s theater sector, among the finalists of the Hystrio award at Vocation 2019
Fabio Bersan, technician
Stefano Piermatteo, digital consultant

The king who was afraid of the dark

You must know dear prince that when it is up to us animals of the night to come out of our dens, usually the animals of the day, including you humans, close your eyes to rest and remember all the day just passed. And these memories are colorful and filled with great things that feel real. And they are called dreams. In dreams you can be anything you want.

Opening of The King Who Was Afraid of the Dark

The king who was afraid of the dark is an original fable, written and interpreted by Mariangela Diana. The inspirations come from the short story “The Shadow” by Hans Christian Andersen, from the fairy tale “Fioccobianco and the noises of the night” by Anna Oliviero Ferraris.

In The King Who Was Afraid of the Dark, the firefly becomes a symbol of the need for the existence of night and darkness, and remembers that there is always a way to enlighten and feel safe.

In addition to the firefly, the protagonists are a child, a prince who will teach his father, the king, how not to be afraid of the dark, and indeed to love its characteristics, natural and suggestive like those of light.

Director’s notes The king who was afraid of the dark

“Depriving oneself of the dark and of the night – explains Mariangela Diana, author and interpreter, Hystrio award at Vocation 2019 – would mean not knowing the other thousand colors of the sky, nocturnal animals and shooting stars. The darkness of a room triggers the often negative and scariest fantasies: witches, ghosts and monsters under the bed have always been the nocturnal enemies. The meeting wants to be discovered instead of the sweetest and most reassuring fantasies that come from the night, such as the rest after a long and tiring day, of fireflies, the protagonists of this fairy tale and above all of dreams, vivid and real especially at night “.

Respect for the places and fears of others is also relevant. It is not asked to eliminate or demonize fear, but to know how to recognize and deal with it with delicacy and understanding. And alongside the respect for a world that lives when we are asleep, busy dreaming.

A fear that both adults and children face, and which can be embarrassing especially in personal and social growth.