The 18 June at Baden Powell Park in Via Angilla Vecchia at 6.30pm, “The imaginary story of Espérer” arrives in Potenza, a sung fairy tale that started in April from Lampedusa and is crossing the whole of Italypassing through cities, towns, seas, between southern and northern Italy, until arriving in Bardonecchia.
The show is staged in Potenza by Antonio Damasco, director and creator, with Laura Conti, Maurizio Verna, Mico Corapi of Teatro delle Forme of Turin with the Fondazione Città della Pace per i Bambini Basilicata.
The initiative is financed with the resources of the SAI project promoted by the Municipality of Potenza, in co-planning with ARCI Basilicata, Consorzio Officine Sociali and the Cooperativa la Mimosa within the social animation activities and is hosted at the Baden Powell Park thanks to the Cooperative social Venus.
Esperer’s island began to take shape in 2015, when Antonio Damasco, playwright, actor and director of the Italian Network of Popular Culture found himself having to explain to his two little girls what was happening on the rocks of Ventimiglia.
Starting in June of that year people coming from the poorest countries of the African continent, in transit through Italy and headed for France, stopped on the border line, taking shelter on the rocks for over four months.
From that experience one was born allegorical fable, transferred into an illustrated book by Alice Tortoroglio: “The imaginary story of Espérer” and a theatrical show that looks at Europe in 2050.
Since 2016 the fairy tale that transforms the drama of migrants into the utopia of an island without borders has also become a project of shared participation from belowthrough a symbolic certificate of existence, while the show, starting from Turin, progressively expands in a national tour involving the cities of Genoa, Benevento, Foggia, Lecce, Palermo and the municipalities of Cambiano, Casciana Terme, San Lazzaro di Savena (BO), San Sepolcro (AR), Carrara and Alessandria.
Espérer has a registry office, in which we could find the names of millions of men and women who left Italy for Belgium, France, Germany, but also Argentina, the United States and many others.
Even today there are thousands of people looking for the island outside this country, in the last ten years alone over 82,000 Italians, mostly young, have set out on the move.
While other men, women and children try to reach Europe through the Mediterranean and the Balkan route with the same desperate need, often rejected by a Europe that seems not to have understood in the last thirty years how to manage flows, resources and possibilities, but above all the stories of those who are arriving.
But Espérer speaks to young people because the inhabitants of the island that exist are those boys and girls in need of a “Certificate of Existence” towards Espérer to start dreaming again.
This initiative is part of the “migrAzioni 2024” program organized by the Fondazione Città della Pace per i Bambini Basilicata which aims to celebrate the “World Refugee Day” as part of the reception activities of the SAI projects with photographic exhibitions, documentaries, cultural events and sportsmen. From May 13th to June 28th, the inhabitants of various centers in Basilicata that host refugees will be involved to remember that in 2023 over 117 million people were forced to flee due to wars and persecution according to UNHCR data.
Entrance is free while seats last.
THEATER OF FORMS
The Teatro delle Forme was founded in October 1995 as a center for research and study on theatrical “forms” that originate from popular traditions and on rituals and on re-invention and re-proposition in an innovative way.
Creator of the Multidisciplinary Residency of the 2 provinces (Turin and Cuneo), he was among the founding members of the Piedmont Association of Residences, creator of cultural districts at regional level, developed thanks to the collaboration between the most accredited local theater companies.
The cultural exchange with theatrical realities oriented on similar dramaturgical paths has led to the creation and participation in national and international projects.
Below is the poster with the details.
