Short Theatre

Short Theatre 2020

La Pelanda – Mattatoio | WeGil | Teatro Argentina | Teatro India

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“This is the time to radically rethink what we are fond of, but which we feel
can no longer exist as it was”

Short Theatre, the international festival dedicated to contemporary creation and the performing arts, is now in its 15th edition, which will take place from 4 to 13 September in Rome in the spaces of WeGil, La Pelanda del Mattatoio Roma, the Teatro Argentina and the Teatro India.

An important milestone that comes at one of the most critical moments in recent history. It will therefore be a special edition, one of transformation: the usual festival structure will be maintained but rethought in a more intimate and unplugged dimension, in continuity with the work of reinventing formats and relating to space and the local area, which has always been central to the Short Theatre project. Shows in public space, performances and installations, live music, DJ sets, talks and workshops will develop the themes that characterise the festival’s identity: the decolonisation of the arts, the representation of stories capable of redefining the way we look at others. And the important process of redefining urban space, which began at the last edition around WeGil, will continue this year.

A dissemination in space but also in time, not only because the number of performances will ensure broad (but safe) accessibility; but also, and above all, because the programme will also be structured through digital and publishing formats, in a series of reverberations between the live events,, the mark left by the festival over these 15 years and the outlining of new directions for the future. “Making the air more friendly, bringing the inside and the outside closer together, including the other in one’s gaze by building a public space in which distance can become something non-violent, welcoming, spreading out in a more invisible and sustainable way in the city, experiencing a potential, even if temporary, that we did not conceive of before.”

The 15th edition of Short Theatre is again under the artistic supervision of Fabrizio Arcuri, founder of the festival – who this year is curating the Panorama Roma, which he conceived and has directed since 2018 – and Francesca Corona, while a process is already underway that will continue in the coming months with the identification of a new artistic direction that can relaunch the directions taken so far.

Time, space, presence, relationship, transmission and transformation will be the keywords of Short Theatre 2020. Among the alienating visions of Anubi is not a dog by the collective Zapruder, which opens the festival on 4 September at WeGil, and the urban agora projected into a fluid space-time of La Plaza, a show, in collaboration with the Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale, by the Catalan collective El Conde de Torrefiel, which closes the edition on 12 and 13 September at the Teatro Argentina, a programme full of reverberations in which the narration and denunciation of reality coexist with the imagination and the rewriting of reality, amplifying each other. A chorus of voices and bodies that create a scenario composed of multiple points of view but unified by the translation of theoretical thought into political practice, of the personal word into collective testimony. A panorama in which creation is the soil and nourishment of transformation, which today is no longer only desirable but necessary. And so, among the unmissable events, there is the meeting with the French feminist philosopher Elsa Dorlin on the very topical theme of the violence exercised by Power on the weakest, and the video installation of the Forensic Oceanography project, which brings together visual art, legal sciences and activism with respect to the relationship between colonialism, migration and the Mediterranean. Also working on the video installation front is the young Kuwaiti artist Monira Al Qadiri, who interprets and recounts the cultures of the Persian Gulf, amid tradition, complexity and stereotypes. Simon Senn is also a visual artist, but he is present at Short with a theatrical performance that offers an original interpretation of the relationship between the real and the virtual. The intertwining of biography and music is then at the centre of the two documentary-portraits made by the acclaimed New York-based director and art curator Marie Losier, dedicated to two particular figures of contemporary music: Felix Kubin and Genesis P-Orridge, while Gérald Kurdian will be working on the collective writing of a new repertoire of queer folk songs in the days leading up to the festival. Together with a group of participants in his workshop Hot Bodies – Choir. And then there is the original Tiresia by BLUEMOTION/Giorgina Pi, the theoretical video installations by Salvo Lombardo, the hybrid performances by Kinkaleri & Jacopo Benassi and Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin, the choreographies by Radouan Mriziga, Jacopo Jenna and Marco D’Agostin, and the creations by Emilia Verginelli and Paola Rota with Simonetta Solder and Teho Teardo, the latter as part of Fabulamundi – Playwriting Europe. And this year, the European project is intertwined with Panorama Roma, the section that will host Alessandra Di Lernia, Frosini/Timpano, lacasadargilla, Manuela Cherubini + Luisa Merloni and Veronica Cruciani.

Then, every evening, at the end of the day, there are the events of Controra, the festival’s musical and night-time section, including the concert by Felix Kubin and the DJ sets by Elena Colombi and Dj Marcelle.

An edition shaped even more by dialogue and relationship, characterised by proximity understood not as a physical and spatial condition but as an intention – political, existential, emotional – to be put back at the centre of the festival’s thought and action. It is the very construction of the programme, in fact, that is the result of the exchange with the artists, in a design of the edition that has inevitably been partly rewritten in light of the health emergency: “If until now Short Theatre mapped and recomposed the signs of the changing landscape of live performance, today its work must be placed on an even deeper level: it is no longer enough to prepare the house in which to invite artists, because we must redesign the form of that house together, also reinventing the strategies and tools with which to build it. And the present tells us that this applies as much to the world of art as it does to the world outside, everywhere. In the need to remain in touch with the present, we have tried to keep the dialogue open with the companies and artists, choosing together how to reshape the relationship with the festival. Some of the artists who had already been involved, especially those from non-European countries or those who would have been in Italy for the first time, will be presented in 2021, to give a wider audience the opportunity to discover their work; as will those whose projects would not have found the ideal conditions to be presented. The intention was therefore to continue the same practice with which we usually devise the programme: sharing the path by which the festival takes shape together with the artists, imagining from time to time the most suitable way to present their work, building a thought and a context around it, composing a discourse together.” say Francesca Corona, Fabrizio Arcuri and the festival staff.

With a view to rewriting the mechanisms of mobility and hospitality in the performing arts, there is a major new feature for this edition: Short Theatre 2020 will be the time to experiment with a form of cohabitation with a second festival, the Portuguese Materiais Diversos, as part of the Displacement of Festivals activity planned by the European project More Than This, which will curate part of the festival programme, presenting the works of David Marques, Volmir Cordeiro, Tiago Cadete and Catarina Miranda.

The Progetti in Residenza are back again this year to amplify the Short Theatre 2020 programme, and this year they are intertwined with Tempo Libero, the section dedicated to workshops: Les Cliniques Dramaturgiques – curated by Muta Imago, Elise Simonet and Jessie Millis the project in residence that for the first time will run throughout the entire festival with a space-time dedicated to the processes of creating new dramaturgies, in which six dramaturgs will offer their attention, their listening and their presence to a group of local theatre and dance artists, through a series of consultations and opportunities for sharing. Meanwhile, OHT‘s three-year residency comes to an end with the Little Fun Palace project, which this year is partly transformed into a Nomadic School aimed at a group of ten participants, but which will then continue to host meetings, talks, book presentations and listening sessions for the entire duration of the festival. The other Tempo Libero workshops and masterclasses will be Jacopo Jenna‘s Dèsir Mimetique, aimed at boys and girls aged 10 to 14, and Gerald Kurdian‘s Hot Bodies – Choir, the result of which will be included in the WeGil programme. The programme dedicated to training is rounded off by the intensive workshop by Françoise Vergès, who was already a guest of the festival last year with a very popular lectio magistralis, on the theme of the decolonisation of the arts, aimed at artists, researchers, members of cultural institutions, activists, etc.

Short Theatre 2020 is conceived and organised by AREA06 with the supervision and artistic support of Fabrizio Arcuri and Francesca Corona. It is produced with the support of MiBACT and the Lazio Region and the patronage of Roma Capitale, Department of Cultural Growth – Capitoline Superintendence of Cultural Heritage. It takes place in collaboration with Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale and with the support of Institut Français Italia, Academy of Spain in Rome, Swiss Institute. Short Theatre is part of Romarama, the cultural programme of Roma Capitale.

PROGRAMME

Short Theatre 2020 starts again in the WeGil space – where the festival will take place from Friday 4 to Sunday 6 September – which since last year has been the subject of a process of reworking and redefining its architectural heritage in a decolonial sense, through the works of the artists and also thanks to the collaboration with the Arts Module of the Master’s in Gender Studies and Policies at Roma Tre, curated by Ilenia Caleo. To allow for compliance with the physical distancing imposed by the anti-Covid regulations, as well as to move through the space in a different way again, on the opening day the performances will be spread out mainly in the open space in front of the building. In these first three days of the programme, we immediately enter into the live issues that animate this edition of Short Theatre. The bodies and imaginaries of “other” cultures are the two key elements of the video installations by Salvo Lombardo, a choreographer based in Rome with his company Chiasma, and those by Monira Al Qadiri, a young visual artist from Kuwait, born in Senegal and raised in Japan. Lombardo presents two works: Jungle Soul, an immersive habitat that reproduces an indistinct “exotic” garden, in which the drifts of cultural appropriation and contemporary imaginaries emerge; and the room-workshop Opacity#2, in which the choreographer brings together the visual, textual and performative traces and objects generated over the period of the creation of Excelsior, one of his latest works, which starts from a post-colonial reading of the Grand Excelsior Ball of 1881, crucial for the affirmation of modern European culture and identity. Monira Al Qadiri, on the other hand, comes to Short Theatre with three of her works – Diver, Travel Prayer and Behind the Sun – which, through the plastic language of video, interpret and recount the cultures of the Persian Gulf, amid tradition, complexity and stereotypes. The Zapruder collective, experimenters in the language of cinema, straddling the line between visual art and performance, presents Anubi is not a dog, an alienating set-performance in which we will follow the making of a film work, whose protagonists will be a group of dogs and their owners engaged in a dog show. At the heart of Radouan Mriziga‘s site-specific performance 0. / Short Theatre is the relationship between the human body and space, in which the Moroccan choreographer continues to explore the link between dance and architecture, and the combination of body, mind and spirit. Gérald Kurdian, on the other hand, presents Hot Bodies – Choir, the final result of a workshop developed in the days leading up to the event at the Teatro India with a heterogeneous group of people, of all ages, backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations, on the composition of a queer singing repertoire. It is part of the interaction between the visual and the performative, Once More by the theatre-dance company Kinkaleri with photographer Jacopo Benassi: an unbridled confrontation between two subjects, where body, sound, light, darkness and words become a free and improvised score, in front of the inscrutable eye of the camera, which records and redefines what happens in real time. On the other hand, Tiresias, a new production by BLUEMOTION / Giorgina P. based on a text by the English poet, rapper and playwright Kate Tempest, takes its cue from our Western tradition, and specifically from ancient literature, to rewrite and completely overturn it. Gabriele Portoghese brings to life a Tiresias that spans eras, cities and sexual genders, as well as the models that have permeated our culture for centuries. An important moment in the articulation of this programme, which dialogues with the historical and colonial heritage of the place, will then be the public meeting with the philosopher Elsa Dorlin, whose Difendersi. A philosophy of violence, a genealogy of self-defence that illustrates how history contrasts bodies “worthy of being defended” with those who, disarmed or rendered indefensible, remain exposed to the violence of the dominant power.

From Monday 7 September, Short Theatre 2020 lights up its second location, that of the Pelanda del Mattatoio in Rome, where the festival continues until it closes on 13 September. In this case too, the safety regulations and the pandemic situation have provided an opportunity to rethink the use of the spaces of the Pelanda, and of the Mattatoio in general, by imagining the internal rooms differently and expanding the use of the external areas, thus allowing new ways of relating between bodies to be explored. It starts with the European project Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe, now in its final edition, which this year is intertwined with the artistic workshop Panorama Roma: a special interaction that brings together five Roman companies – Alessandra Di Lernia, Lacasadargilla, Frosini/Timpano, Manuela Cherubini & Luisa Merloni and Veronica Cruciani – with five texts selected by the European project, giving the public the opportunity to discover the creative process directly through daily open rehearsal sessions. In this context, the Pelanda will also host the staging of another of the texts selected by Fabulamundi: Illegal Helpers, by the author Maxi Obexer, translated into a site-specific device by Paola Rota and Simonetta Solder, with the musical dramaturgy conceived and developed by Teho Teardo. The illegal helpers are the stars of this show, men and women who take the risk every day of acting to help migrants and asylum seekers cross borders, face interviews and find shelter. The theme of the Mediterranean migration crisis reveals the other side of colonialism and runs through the week of programming at the Pelanda with the video installation Liquid Violence by Forensic Oceanography, an artistic research project based at the prestigious Goldsmiths, University of London, which critically investigates the militarised border regime in the Mediterranean Sea. A collaborative work that uses the format and the artistic context to generate concrete activism, helping to provide scientific data for investigations and legal actions related to certain cases that have occurred in the Mediterranean.

Although from a different perspective, Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin also addresses the theme of colonialism and white privilege, the matrices of the systemic racism that we also experience in Italy, interweaving autobiography, theoretical reflection and artistic research. Գիշեր | gisher deals with personal history, with the deep roots of a prismatic identity, with the ancestral heritage and intergenerational trauma of those who descend from a persecuted culture such as the Armenian one. Also in the field of personal storytelling, between autobiography and artistic creation, we find First Love by Marco D’Agostin: in the footsteps of his childhood hero, the skier Stefania Belmondo,, the dancer and choreographer explores the motor matrix of his own practice and reinterprets the most famous competition of the Piedmontese champion, the 15km freestyle at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, in a cry of revenge, desperate exultation and the dismemberment of nostalgia. It is again the gaze on the blurred boundary between one’s own story and the general themes that the present imposes on us, from which Io non sono nessuno by Emilia Verginelli, which debuts as a preview at Short Theatre 2020 and brings together episodes from her experience as a theatre volunteer in a group home, investigating the relationship with some of the children who live there, including Muradif, the work’s co-protagonist. That grey area that exists between personal history and collective experience is then embodied in the movements and bodies of each of us, producing imagery, a model, a shared cultural unity, and making the body a true archive: this is what Jacopo Jenna in his Alcune Coreografie, created in collaboration with the visual artist Roberto Fassone, in which the body and dance of Ramona Caia is measured live with an immense repertoire of gestures, movements and exemplary choreographies from the history of dance – academic, popular, avant-garde – in a cinematic montage of images that continues until it loses the very link with the human figure, transforming itself into pure movement left to the interpretation of the audience. In the same way, David Marques in his Danca Sem Vergonha explores the motor and cultural imaginaries linked to dance, but from a more intimate position, specifically that of his own room, where “without shame” he abandons himself to dance and self-expression, blurring the plane of time and space, of the public and the private. David Marques is one of the artists who are part of the cohabitation that Short Theatre is creating this year with Materiais Diversos, a Portuguese festival that is curating part of Short’s programme of Short as part of the Displacement of Festivals envisaged by the European project More Than This: a way to question the notion of “hospitality”, which often conceals dynamics of domination and power, reducing the other to a crystallised image. In addition to Marques, Materiais Diversos presents the dancer Catarina Miranda, with Dream is the dreamer, a solo that explores the dimension of the human and the post-human, of the real and the imaginary through the manipulation of materials, such as plastic; Volmir Cordeiro, with his piece Street where, in the company of a percussionist on stage, through the body and movement he makes the public space his own, exploring its different souls and incorporating the subjectivities that run through it; and Tiago Cadete who, in Fiume takes us on an imaginary guided tour that crosses the stories of the Tiber and the Tagus, the longest river on the Iberian Peninsula, amid glories and tragedies, mysteries and intrigues.

Between the real and the imaginary, or rather, the digital, we then have Be Arielle F. by visual artist Simon Senn, a theatrical performance that is also a lecture, a demonstration and a confession, in which it emerges that the virtual world and the real world are not always in opposition, making visible the unexpected intertwining of technology, representation, gender and law. Gender and experimentation are then also the central themes in the two documentary-portraits that Marie Losier, an acclaimed New York-based director and art curator, dedicates to two exceptional personalities of the international music scene: Felix Kubin – the undisputed star of the experimental scene, the doyen of electronic pop who will be present at Short Theatre 2020 not only on video but also in concert – in the film Felix in Wonderland!; and Genesis P-Orridge, singer, musician and artist who was one of the main exponents of industrial, a pioneer of acid house and the mastermind behind the Throbbing Gristle, who recently passed away, and whose relationship – of love and life – with her partner Lady Jaye in the documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye..

The fifteenth edition of Short Theatre 2020 closes between the Pelanda and the Teatro Argentina, where La Plaza by the El Conde de Torrefiel collective will be staged on 12 and 13 September, created in collaboration with the Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale. La Plaza, a show for twenty performers on stage – possible in this time of health emergency only thanks to the large size of the stage – which gives life to an urban agora that narrates the present by leveraging the collective memory of the past, between everyday minutiae and epochal events, expanding our perception of space and time and projecting attention onto the future, conceived as an unknown and unpredictable dimension.

Short Theatre 2020

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