Rediscovering well-known places, taking away the habit of looking and proposing new horizons of meaning is an important objective of the project which involved seventeen fifth-year high school students from the Canossiano Institute of Treviso who, thanks to the Theater professor, Tommaso Franchin, brought their theatrical performance in via Ronchese, Saturday 20 April.
“In this project – explained the teacher – I wanted to share part of my professional path with the students. This is not a traditional theater show, but, instead, a theatrical practice linked to urban regeneration.”
The aim is to tell the story of a place, to reveal it and suggest new points of view to those who only know it from the outside. Furthermore, as far as teaching is concerned, the children were able to develop analysis and observation skills.
To prepare the show, the students explored the place, observed the details, the environments and the architecture, but above all talked to the people, interviewed residents, shopkeepers, the parishioners of the Immaculate Conception, and tried to understand where the stereotypes about the place come from .
“In reality – explained Professor Franchin – the first reason why we chose via Ronchese was the proximity to the school, the fact of being a place known and talked about only for its negative aspects was secondary, however we it allowed us to start from stereotypes to understand and transform them. Some of these are, then, true results: life in working-class neighborhoods is not simple, and by talking to people, the kids understood that it has been like this since the birth of the public housing area. Furthermore, now the population is transforming and we still don’t fully understand it. Episodes linked to petty crime exist, as everywhere, in reality. In the suburbs there are pockets of poverty, ghettos are created, but the suburbs are also much more.”
Thus the students of the 5th C of the Human Sciences Theater and Cinema high school not only interviewed the population of via Ronchese, they met and got to know them, but to these interviews they added their thoughts, their reflections and imagined how to propose their project with sensitivity and delicacy, because the objective was not to raise controversy, but simply to broaden the gaze.
“At the beginning of the show the kids hung up t-shirts with the stereotypes that people from outside imagine of the place written on them, because the performance was not dedicated to the residents, but rather to those arriving from outside. In front of the Carducci elementary schools we tried to bring the children back to the games of the past. Who, in fact, creates integration and mutual knowledge more than children and school, where parents have to meet? At the end of the traveling show, the students wore t-shirts that spoke of community and the desire to live in Via Ronchese. We shared a journey, showed places that have a certain charm, a very particular beauty, some had never been here before.”
An initiative that can be replicated in other places, which could help recognize conflicts and mend the rifts in the suburbs.
Since 2017, in fact, Tommaso Franchin has been carrying out this urban regeneration project through the theater with his company Exvuoto Teatro: “We collaborate more and more with associations and departments, we have been in very difficult neighborhoods as well as in wonderful villages, we are not interested in telling the conflict, conflicts are everywhere, even in wonderful villages, although not everyone perceives them, we are interested in the place itself, the theatre, the art, they must not teach anything, but show new points of view, reveal what is there ‘And”.
