“Biennale Teatro 1975. Texts and images from the Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts” opens today

The inauguration was held today, Friday May 30^th in Sala delle Colonne at Ca’ Giustinian, of Biennale Teatro 1975. Texts and images from the Historical Archives of the Contemporary Arts of La Biennale di Venezia, a short tour through the documents of La Biennale’s archives in the pre-opening event of the 53^rd International Theatre Festival directed by Willem Dafoe (31 May > 15 June). The project will remain open to the public through the end of the festival, Sunday June 15^th, from 9 am to 7 pm (free admission).

Biennale Teatro 1975 is a project developed jointly by the Historical Archive with the 53^rd International Theater Festival, focused by the director Dafoe on the physical presence of the actor, the body, around which the grammar of late twentieth-century theatre was rewritten in a whirlwind of aesthetics that remain the harbingers to our day of inspirations and possibilities. In this sense Biennale Teatro 1975, which under the direction of Luca Ronconi became a fulcrum for the experiences of new theater, gathering seminal figures in Venice from both sides of the Atlantic, emerges in this year’s program as a “hinge” between the past and the present. Hence the tribute from the Archives, a place in which research and reflection are conducted based on a valorization of the documents that record the Institution’s activities, in this case through a short but significant excursus covering that crucial year, with texts, images, photographs and documents from the Archive’s fonds, which tell the story of the performances, the workshops, the conferences and the special projects that characterized that program. The ASAC’s own heritage also contributes to the exhibition curated by Gerardo Cejas, who, for the occasion, has reused some of the structures originally designed by the Formafantasma studio for the exhibition The Disquieted Muses. When La Biennale di Venezia Meets History (organised by La Biennale at the Central Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale, 2020).

That incredible chapter has also given rise to Open meeting: Biennale Teatro 75/25 Fifty years of new theater, which will be held on Thursday June 5^th in Sala delle Colonne at Ca’ Giustinian (at 3 pm). This will be an opportunity to reflect upon and explore the transmission of knowledge and the evolution of the body on stage with some of the protagonists of that moment in theatre history. Invited by the Director Willem Dafoe, and holding firm the indication that serves as the Festival’s guideline, Theatre is Body-Body is Poetry, Eugenio Barba, Thomas Richards, Giorgio Sangati, Richard Schechner, Sandra Toffolatti, Satyamo Hernandez, Toby Marshall and Chris Torch will meet to continue to reflect upon the dynamics, the techniques, the possibilities of the actor’s body. Thereby weaving a thread that runs through the decades, the schools and the theatrical cultures, knotting together different generations and poetics into one shared impulse. The encounter will be coordinated by theater scholar and critic Andrea Porcheddu.

The space for discussion and debate at the festival is further enriched on Friday June 6^th, again in Sala delle Colonne at Ca’ Giustinian (at 3 pm), by the lectio magistralis Rasaesthetics and Rasaboxes: Performing Embodied Emotions to be held by Richard Schechner, founder and theorist of Performance Studies, a scholar of oriental theatre and founder of the Performance Group in 1967.