“Ticket, please.” There is a conductor on Turin’s historic tram. It is not a journey into the past, but we are in the present day, more precisely in Piazza Carlina. The Zerimago theater company operates the tram’s engines, experimenting for the first time with the idea of bringing theater onto public transport. To do this, they invented a tailor-made show.
«Crime on the tram» is a comic mystery, where contemporaneity and past intersect. It tells the vicissitudes of a film production that finds itself on a tram recording the scenes of a film. But suddenly the protagonist dies. And the tram becomes the site of the crime and the investigations. «Have you seen a black briefcase?». “Someone help us find these clues.” The audience participates, makes jokes with the actors, is part of the story. Meanwhile the vehicle, built in the 1960s, crosses Piazza Carlina, Porta Nuova, the Royal Gardens. «The biggest challenge? Not being able to even do a rehearsal on the tram” says Chiara Moretto, 24, who directed.
«Fortunately I live next to the terminus of number 13. Every morning, as I went to work, I imagined the actors moving and calculated the spaces». She is very young, like the rest of the company, made up of around thirty people aged 18 to 32. Yet they invented something new, because a theatrical show on a moving historic tram had never been seen before.
«The idea came from Linea 26 events, with which we are imagining new shows» explains Giulia Luna Ricaldone, 22 years old, president of Zerimago. A way to «bring a new theater to Turin – she explains – that is interactive and brings the public closer to this art. Ricaldone is convinced that Turin is one of the best environments in Italy for theatre, whether prose or opera. «There are many opportunities and events, and this also allows us to experiment with unconventional forms of staging, such as the one on the tram». And then, you find great youth participation “especially after the Covid period”. «It is a more accessible sector – she says – both on an economic and organizational level. Now the only thing that is required of the public is to be there. We’ll take care of the rest.”
«Crime on the tram» was performed on Friday 14 June with two performances. But Zerimago has no intention of stopping and assures: «There will be other dates».
