Venice, July 1 (askanews) – The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 52nd edition of the International Festival of Contemporary Theatre of the Venice Biennale, directed by the duo Ricci/Forte, was awarded to the Australian company Back to Back Theatre, which since 1987 has been composed of actors who identify as cognitively disabled or neurodivergent. Gianni Forte introduced them as follows: “In a fragile, violent contemporaneity, which stigmatizes the horrors of a lack of education and toxic individualism, but which appears inert to the demolition and which tries to delegitimize the differences – he said – the theatre, in its highest form, continues its path of openness towards the community, as a possibility of meeting with the territory. Art becomes a bridge between itself and the world especially when it is the handicap that transforms itself into a tool for reconnaissance”. And Stefano Ricci continued: “A visionary parable of communication that disintegrates with poetic ferocity every prejudice, every stigma of compassion. If the body has expressive limits, such demarcations on stage become in turn dramatic in form. Our fears, purities, tolerances, moral blindness are blown away by the cruel fairy tales of the dangerous worlds of Back to Back Theatre where difference is the bearer of amplification of knowledge”. The 2024 Golden Lion also seems to be a political message, as well as a cultural one, that concerns all of us, our society and the way we think about others.
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