A story that culminates in the celebration of children’s rights and the transmission of an important message: the protection of childhood. A text with a simple structure that does not hide a pedagogical intent: to make children aware of the rights of which they are too often deprived, starting with the children of the so-called “first world”.

Synopsis

A long time has passed, and now Alice has finally returned, but she is sad and crying.  She left without luggage, but she came back with a heavy suitcase: inside there are objects and memories related to the episodes of her wandering.

Encuraged by the Queen of Hearts, Alice pulls out of her suitcase, one by one, all the objects she has collected during her journey. Each object is linked to a memory, each memory to an episode of her journey, each episode to a story, each story to a child, each child to a denied right. Alice revisits the fundamental rights of childhood, crossing several times, in one direction or another, the border that separates “Wonderland” from reality, telling, with the necessary lightness and avoiding lyrical and dramatic excesses, stories of denied childhood.

The show is inspired by Processo alle verdure – vizi e virtù alimentari degli ortaggi by Roberto Luciani.

 

Plot

Carlotta was sent to bed without dinner because she didn’t want to eat the soup. She tosses and turns in bed angry and… hungry! After all, what fault does she have if the vegetables are not good? None! The vegetables themselves are to blame. Of course, if they tasted like candy or chocolate she would eat them, but they taste like… What do they taste like? Carlotta doesn’t know, because… she’s never tasted them! Before falling asleep, Carlotta ponders a drastic solution to get rid of the vegetables and thinks that, if she was the mayor, she would make a law to have all vegetables thrown in the rubbish!

 

In the middle of the night, what can only happen in dreams or fairy tales happens: the little girl is woken up by the voice of the mayor, who has heard the proposal to eliminate vegetables, and, from two photographs, her grandfather and grandmother emerge.

 

So there are enough elements to start… a trial! A cheerful and grotesque trial, which highlights the merits and flaws of vegetables. But it will not be enough to issue a verdict declaring guilt or innocence, and then why not continue with a game, the “tasting game” and a party, the “vegetable party”, and then slip again, slowly, in a sweet sleep that, when she wakes up, will sprout in Carlotta’s mind the seed of a doubt: what if the vegetables were good?

 

The plot unfolds in a succession of twists, songs and funny situations, hovering between dream and reality. The set is composed of a huge bed, on which Carlotta, her grandfather and grandmother play, sing, laugh and give life, through the use of silhouettes, to vegetables. The mayor’s voice is the unmistakable and ironic one of Paolo Poli, who embellishes the show like a lace.

 

Of course, children will not leave the show with an irresistible desire to stuff themselves up on vegetables (or to eat cabbage… as a snack!), but perhaps they too will have the same doubts as Carlotta and decide to at least… try them!

Re-elaboration for actors and animated objects from the homonymous fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.

The show

Who hasn’t felt like an ugly duckling? Andersen’s fairy tale contains a striking element of actuality: the discriminated diversity. In our version of the famous fairy tale of the Danish author, three strange characters meet on stage, all somehow a little “ugly” and a little “different”: the narrator – Pietro, a bit fat and clumsy – a famous pianist, Professor Pianissimo de Pianis – who cries like a child when he gets angry – and his helper Mandracche.

Everyone has a few little flaws to hide. And maybe that’s why they have a bad habit of offending and teasing others. But in spite of everything, they manage to find an agreement to tell a beautiful fairy tale. And that is how they tell the story of the Ugly Duckling, and they tell it just as Andersen invented it. Then, as if by magic, the old ivy-covered castle where the ducks used to brood will appear on the scene and we will witness the long brooding of the mother duck and the birth of the ugly duckling. You will learn of the vicissitudes of the poor little fellow, mocked by the ducks, pecked by the chickens, attacked by the turkey and even rejected by the farm girl because of his ugliness and diversity.

The spectator will then follow his escape from the courtyard and will experience his thousand encounters in the swamp of the wild ducks, in the little old lady’s house with the cat Sonnecchia and the Hen Gambacorta. And finally he will witness the first appearance of the beautiful swans. In telling the story, however, our ‘heroes’ will realise that each of us, beautiful or ugly, good or not so much, always has a little treasure inside. That even those who are not destined to turn into a beautiful swan can somehow become one. And then together they will find a different end to the story, where the ugly duckling will no longer become a swan, but… but we won’t tell you the end, it must be a surprise… otherwise what kind of fairy tale is it?

Once upon a time there was a mother so poor that she couldn’t have children…and so she decided to build one! And she called him Teo, like Prometheus, but everyone called him FRANKENSTEIN.

The show

The story is about Teo, a good child, but different from all the others: his mother has used the wrong things to make his body and head, he moves in an clumsy way and does not immediately understand everything. Even Dr. Frankenstein, the famous novel by Mary Shelley, builds a kind of godson, in that case very monstrous and frightening, and that is why the child is called Frankenstein by all. But his heart is like that of all other children, perhaps even more special, because she used the most precious things she had to build him… which ones?  We won’t tell you, we don’t want to tell you the whole story, we just want to tell you that it is a story where you laugh, where you are touched and with a little shiver of fear every now and then.

Pino Costalunga, director of the show, explains: In this free version for children, Frankenstein is a monster simply because he is different from all the others, the result of fantasy. Unfortunately, often fantasy combined with fear creates monsters even where there are none, prevents comparison and often even limits our ability to love, leading us to that deleterious feeling that is hatred or stupid acts of bullying.

Music

Listen to the music and songs from But Why Does Everyone Call Me Frankenstein? on Spotify, AppleMusic and other streaming music platforms!

The show

The mobile phone and the web”, says Aldo Cazzullo, “are the greatest stupidity of humanity. The mobile phone and the web,” replied the children, “are part of our lives and our future.

The story explores the relationship between parents and children in the digital age. On the one hand, there are those who see in the mobile phone above all the risks; on the other hand, there are those who see in it a series of multiple possibilities. On stage, there is not only the relationship between the actors, but also the connection and the relationship with that screen, which on stage is often brighter and certainly bigger and obviously more full of possibilities than the human actor. In short, it is a way to delve into the words of this beautiful book in an amusing and unpredictable way, with a clear attempt not to find answers, but to raise further questions. Because it is asking questions to find strategies that distinguishes the human from the technological medium.

The show is part of the project FUORI DALLA RETE – Percorsi educativi all’uso del web, conceived by Fondazione Aida in collaboration with the Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, ULSS 9 Scaligera, Prospettiva Famiglia and “Scuola e territorio – Educare insieme” with the patronage of the Comune di Verona – Politiche giovanili.

Songs, inventions, a ballet, a puppet, two actors, theatre and lots of magic are the ingredients of “Leo invents everything”!

The show

Lisa is a little girl who loves to invent, observe the world and study. She is a happy child… except for today!

She is desperate because she didn’t manage to get top marks at school. Gioconda, who is her doll, but also a magic puppet, tries to console her, but there is no way of comforting her …. “Leonardo da Vinci would not have made a mistake,” says Lisa. Yes, because Lisa’s role model, her myth, is Leonardo da Vinci.

So, while she is working in her workshop, as if by magic she meets her favourite genius: Leonardo da Vinci. A wonderful friendship immediately develops between Leonardo and Lisa: Lisa reveals what her ideas have become today and what benefits they have brought to our times, while Leonardo, ever more enthusiastic, gives her new stimuli to never stop dreaming and creating… A tale for everyone, engaging, educational and with a touch of magic and madness.

A captivating story to discover the genius of Leonardo da Vinci through the eyes of a little girl. A magical adventure to make children reflect on how precious the study, exploration and interest in Nature is, but above all how important is the understanding of the world that comes from observing it.

 

 

The show

Based on Il misterioso segreto degli invincibili (Grappolo di Libri, 2019) by Simone Dini Gandini, the show recounts one of the darkest periods in Italian and European history, that of the Nazi-fascist madness during the Second World War. Football is therefore the pretext for recounting those bleak years, so as to give the audience a representation of Italy caught in the grip of fascism, in which, however, there were those who had the strength and courage to remain human and resist. At the same time, following the sporting parable of the Grande Torino, we will also witness the enthusiasm, energy and desire for redemption and rebirth of the years immediately following the war, years in which the Granata team dominated the football championship while Italy on two wheels was divided between cheering for Coppi and cheering for Bartali, all correlated by archive images from newsreels, radio broadcasts and newspaper articles of the time.

The epic comes to an end on 4th May 1949, when Erbstein and the entire team lost their lives in a plane crash into the bastion of the Superga basilica. From that day on, the story ends and the myth begins. Heroes are always immortal in the eyes of those who believe in them. And so the boys will believe that Torino is not dead, it is just away, as IndroMontanelli wrote in Corrieredella Sera on 5 May 1949.

On stage an actor, Valerio Ameli, who, with light brushstrokes, will paint a picture of that Italy and will retrace together with Erbstein his daring escape from the Fascist Laws and his internment in a labour camp. A multi-instrumentalist musician, Andrea Faccioli, will accompany the audience through the melodies of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, songs whose frivolous appearance often concealed subversive messages that were dangerous to the Fascist regime.

 

The show

A diary full of blank pages is the gift Giannino Stoppani receives on Wednesday 20th September 1905 on the occasion of his ninth birthday: blank pages to be filled with facts and … misdeeds.

Giannino, the protagonist, gets into a lot of trouble not because he is bad, but because he is curious, in the most positive sense of the word, because he wants his own good, but above all that of others, because he is a child open to the world and because, like all children, he has a strong sense of justice.

We thought it would be interesting to stage the adventures of a lively child, full of the joy of living with others and full of imagination, like Gian Burrasca, at a time when children no longer receive blank diaries to fill with stories about themselves in relation to the world, in which to immortalise their days full of adventures and fantasy.

Staging the “Giornalino di Gian Burrasca” means re-proposing an ancient story, but one that still manages to speak today of a world made up of simple but strong feelings, far away, but which still has much to say.

Director’s notes

Our edition takes into account not only the novel by Vamba (Luigi Bertelli), but also the historical television edition that RAI produced in 1964, directed by Lina Wertmüller, with music by Nino Rota and starring Rita Pavone.

The black and white scene opens up like the pages of that book, reawakening to the child and adult spectator the enchantment of the simplicity of a world that no longer exists. That’s why the idea of keeping the original language of Vamba, to arouse in the child spectator the curiosity of words, the liveliness of a vocabulary that will be understandable beyond the fall in use of some terms (such as “busse”, “collegio” etc.) or the rarity of their use (“parsimonia” etc.) as it always happens in the game of theatre.

From the screenplay we borrow the idea of having the actress play the role of GianBurrasca and all the other roles played by two other actors (the game of theatrical masquerade!) and we propose music and songs from that distant television version, even if we then move towards a completely new theatrical production, which has the flavour of an old fairy tale, in the Liberty style or early 20th century Variety, but which can speak to today’s children and adults.
Pino Costalunga