51st International Theatre Festival

The 51st International Theatre Festival will run from 15 June to 1 July 2023, Emerald, directed by Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte and organised by La Biennale di Venezia.

After Blue and after Rot, here is Emerald. The four-year project by directors Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte (ricci/forte) for the Biennale Teatro 2023 turns green, evoking the city of wonders in the land of Oz, the Emerald City, and inviting the public to take a journey into amazement.

“This new edition of the Festival will drape itself in emerald green, for a symbolic horizon that stands for a time of profound change, of transformation, of transition to a new phase of life: the regeneration after winter, the revitalisation, the resurrection, rebirth and freedom of the human being.” (ricci/forte).

A Festival that tears you away from reality to make you land in a world in which everything is possible, even learning how to live: Armando Punzo’s magic wand searches for the splendour in the darkness of prisons; FC Bergman’s flying brooms soar over the galleries of the Royal Museum in Antwerp to photograph the absurd in our lives; Tiago Rodrigues’ herb garden dissects ideas about individual versus massified freedom; the sound spells of Federica Rosellini, merged with the cabals of Giacomo Garaffoni, challenge one another in a singular tenson with the oceanic spells of Fabiana Iacozzilli, which governs the dematerialisations of Tolja Djokovic, establishing an unbreakable vow; the deep sleep spell is shattered by the moral incantations of Boris Nikitin; Romeo Castellucci’s metamorphic griffins fly over Bashar Murkus’ necromantic Milky Way; Gaetano Palermo’s immortal elf loses its way among the levitating objects by Morana Novosel; the maps in transformation through which Mattias Anderson’s questions travel reveal numbers by arithmancy to El Conde de Torrefiel; Valerio Leoni’s parselmouth soothes Noémie Goudal and Maëlle Poésy as they wander through the dark forest in search of the philosopher’s stone.