LENDINARA (Rovigo) – Sunday 19 May was the last day of performance for the Tomeo Award 2024the provincial competition for Polesine children’s theater groups, created by Irene Lissandrin with ViviRovigo and the Municipality of Lendinara with the Cittadella della cultura, in partnership with Badia Polesine, Rovigo, Loreo and Taglio di Po, Arteven-Regione Veneto-Mic, the patronage of the Province and Fondazione Rovigo cultura and a large consortium of private supporters, primarily Inox tech spa. On stage, in the morning, the children of the “Il Teatro Volante” workshop organized by ViviRovigo, and in the evening, the students of the Theater Group of the Primo Levi Higher Education Institute of Badia Polesine. For a nice combination, both shows were environmentally themed. The awards will be held on May 24th.
Last ritual of the reading of the “principles” of the Tomeo Prize by the god of the arts Apollo; final greetings from the stage, from where Lissandrin repeated once again: “The Tomeo Prize is the opportunity to bring to the stage all the benefits acquired by doing theatre. The kids who do theater are free, free to be, free to do, free to think.” Last groups of people in front of the Ballarin theatre, last spectators still lingering at the tables of the bar in the small square in front of the theatre, last efforts for the ushers and ticket office staff, ViviRovigo volunteers and staff of the city library. Latest votes. On the Jury was Athos Tromboni, the Ferrara pen of theater criticism.
In the morningthe children of “Il Teatro Volante” brought to the stage “In search of lost harmony”, competing in the 6-10 year category: original fairy tale by Beatrice Pizzardo, who also directed. Minimal scenography, except for a “wise” oak tree, the entire scenic space was well interpreted by the children, suitably prepared as if for a fantastic game, in which they personified all sorts of animals, inhabitants of the peaceful land of Harmonisia. But the kingdom and the planet are in danger, overwhelmed by plastic and shrouded in bad air, pollution and recklessness. The animals will have to decide to quickly restore harmony to the environment, mutual respect and balance with nature, to continue living happily. An environmental awareness fairy tale, in which the children played the part with joyful conviction with the difficult choral technique, but even better they shared pleasant and well-distributed scenic movements.
In the evening, they took to the stage the 12 students of the Iis Primo Levi theater group, directed by Georg Sobbe, competing in the 14-19 year old category. For them, an experimental dramatization, with choral acting: “Not even this piece will save the world”, a powerful and disruptive text, never performed in Italy, by the contemporary Austrian playwright Thomas Köck, translated and adapted specifically from German by Georg Sobbe himself. A text that addresses the environmental issue in a drastic, perhaps ideological, but necessary way, as Sobbe himself said. The theme is the reaching of the point of no return in humanity’s journey towards the destruction of the planet. The acceleration of the extinction of animal species, like an ordeal of broken lives, scattered along the path, is now the tragic anticipation of human extinction.
It is like a cry of pain and accusation, which comes from a future that cannot be lived, from the many animal species made to disappear by European man, between massacres and futility, which now declaim and claim, their lack of possibility of existing, issuing warnings that lacerate consciences. The words, Italian and English, fall like boulders into the “silence of extinction”. Monoculture, failure of capitalism, environmental sustainability as fashion; politics has run out of jokes for the next seasons too; “it is an occupation of the future by the present”. The sound commentary of the organ gives the narration an epic tinge, like a contemporary epic song. The acting is shockingly powerful and reaches the audience without half measures. Georg Sobbe’s boys were superlative, moving up onto the stage for the final comment. “We have no place other than the theater – commented the actor and director – to give these messages. The theater is a sacred place where words have weight.” Words can change the world.
