Experimentation, creativity, new research: emerging theater in unconventional places. The Ferrara Off Bonsai Festival returns to Ferrara for its eighth edition. Over twenty shows, starting from Friday 10 May.
Two performances open the dance: ‘In chaos nato’, for the debut of Pouria Jashn Tirgan, a monologue that combines spoken word and narrative theatre, with his biography at the centre, poised between Iran and Italy, and ‘For pleasure’ , with Annalisa Limardi, in which we question what pleasure is and why we need it. Tirgan, in reality, will debut even earlier, at the Ariosto high school in Ferrara, on May 8th at 8.30pm.
“The choice to open the festival with a date outside the theater – says Marco Sgarbi, organizational director of Ferrara Off – aims to immediately characterize this edition as reaching out towards other public places and languages”. The choice fell on Ariosto also for another reason: a good part of the artists on the bill were selected through the ‘Offline Call’, which collected almost 300 proposals and which this year saw the contribution of some special selectors : the students of the Ariosto high school, precisely. “The artistic direction of this edition did not arise only from me or from collaborators – explains Giulio Costa, artistic director of Ferrara Off –: we created an introductory course to theatre, with students from the Ariosto high school, who examined the videos and have chosen the artists for the festival, by doing so, we look for the audiences of tomorrow in the places where they can be found.” Annalisa Limardi will be on stage again on May 12th, while on May 18th, Bonsai opens its doors to the world of nature with Royal Jelly, an event in collaboration with the Natural History Museum of Ferrara, to celebrate World Bee Day. On the 19th, the festival moves to Palazzo Naselli Crispi, in the morning (for children and families), with the show ‘Storie acquatiche’, with the Consorzio di Bonifica Pianura di Ferrara. The policy is clear: the theatre, with Bonsai, leaves the theaters and meets the community, in different ways. There will be many other places involved, in addition to the Ferrara Teatro Off: Villa Imoletta, Torrione del Barco, Museum of Paleontology (with the collaboration of Unife), even the Multi-storey Car Park, as well as an exit outside the Municipality of Ferrara, at the Codigoro water pump, to remember Bassani’s heron. The program, which ends at the Il Sorpasso restaurant in Ferrara on June 25th, can be found at the link: https://www.ferraraoff.it/rassegna/festival-bonsai-2024/. “The municipality – says the councilor for culture, Marco Gulinelli – is present alongside Teatro Bonsai, which allows us to rediscover the pleasure of sharing, listening, sharing, reasoning and comparing ourselves with others, through the use of unpublished proposals, of shows with courageous artists”. “The festival – adds the region’s budget councilor Paolo Calvano – has come to characterize the regional cultural offer. As a Region, we want to invest not only in the right to move freely in Europe and the world, but also in the right to stay, creating the conditions, through events such as the Teatro Bonsai festival”.
