Biennale College Teatro: the new call for actresses and actors

Friday 12 December 2025 is the launching date for the new Biennale College Teatro international call dedicated to actresses and actors under 30 from all around the world. The call will remain online on the website of La Biennale – www.labiennale.org – through 22 January 2026.

In his first year as Director, Willem Dafoe had focused Biennale Teatro on the physical presence of the actor as an essential element of creation for the theatre. Hence the idea of enriching the scope of Biennale College Teatro, the initiative that consolidates La Biennale di Venezia’s tradition of experimentation and support for new talent, by following the Italian calls for directing and playwriting with a specific international call for actresses and actors. Dafoe writes: “The new programme is conceived as an experiment and will be based on a single concrete idea: the physical presence of the mentors and the participants in the same room. The rest will be explored as it occurs. There are no methods to follow nor results to achieve, but things to do, actions to take, performances to experience”.

The call will lead to the selection of up to a maximum of 12 participants who will take part in a residency project in Venice developed over the span of four weeks – from 25 May to 21 June 2026. The daily schedule will be structured as two separate sessions of activities:: in the morning practices conducted with the mentors and in the afternoon free individual and/or group experimentation. The mentors who will guide the participants in turn over the four-week programme are: the director himself Willem Dafoe, Evangelia and Mary Rando, Simon McBurney, Silvia Costa. The selected actresses and actors will furthermore be invited to attend all the activities and performances of the 54^th International Theatre Festival, to be held in Venice from 7 to 21 June 2026.

Get the call