INSPIRING PRINCIPLES

PREMISE

Created in Rovigo in 1994, Opera Prima Festival's aim was to bring a new theatrical generation to the attention of critics, a generation that in the Nineties struggled to stand out and was left outside Italian theatres. OPERA PRIMA became a sort of "home" and a point of reference for this generation, the self-describe Invisible Theatres generation. With its help, a large number of artists managed to rise from this "invisibility". This Festival was the first to show to both the audience and critics actors like Ascanio Celestini and Roberto Latini, and groups like Motus, Fanny & Alexander, Teatro Clandestino, Masque Teatro, Ariette, etc.

As a sign of recognition, the Festival was awarded the UBU prize “Giuseppe Bartolucci” from a jury chaired by the critic Franco Quadri. With Massimo Munaro and Teatro del Lemming as directors and the Ente Rovigo Festival as organiser, Opera Prima received also a recognition and funding from the MiBACT.
The Festival closed in 2002 because of some funding cuts from the Municipality of Rovigo, even though it was one of its promoters. It started up again in 2006, thanks to Teatro del Lemming, with a broader and international aim, bringing to Rovigo important artists, like Alejandro Jodorowski, and rising groups coming from France, Canada, Egypt, and from all over the world. Then other cuts. Then nothing.

THE NEW OPERA PRIMA

With the incentive of a renewed commitment made by the Municipality of Rovigo, a new association, called Ass. FESTIVAL OPERA PRIMA ets, was born in Rovigo with the intent of organising a new cycle of events for the next three years and even after, continuing from the Festival history and customs. This association gather people from different cultural background who find themselves in agreement over the principles of this Festival.

INSPIRING PRINCIPLES

Opera Prima is, first of all, a festival dedicated to contemporary theatre, i.e. the kind of theatre that explores and searches for new languages. Secondly, it's a Festival dedicated, as the name already implies, to new creativities of the younger generation. Opposing the new customs of levelling out all the differences, accepting only what is already known and considered “in” and conforming every day more the posters of those Festival who should be dedicated to "new theatre" (but that, more often than not, are copy-pasted one from the other), Opera Prima Festival wants to host and give value to the variety of tendencies and researches going on in Italian theatres. Just as it was at the beginning, this Festival wants to be a meeting place, a place where ideas, thoughts, practices, generations can talk with each other, compare between each other, confront each other. Starting from these three years, this Festival wants to be also a bridge between generations. Past, present, future. In a world in which even art is reduced to a moment without history or memory, we feel the need to build a place where artists of different ages, teachers and students, well-known and rising artists, can meet and think, hanging between legacy and betrayal. We also believe this can happen once again only on the skirts of the empire, in a small city like ours, because only far away from the bigger "communication" centres, which have the habit of dull or even dissolve every subject, can real differences be born again.

FESTIVAL'S PROJECT

Every year the Festival will name four artists or groups, already well-known or disappeared, coming from different generations, that will be invited with their own play. Each artist will then find and name a younger group to invite. In this way each "historical" group will be responsible to invite a "young" group. These young groups should be still unknown, or at least not being yet a well-affirmed and well-known group. Last but not least, the Festival will put forth a call for artists and groups, both Italian and European: through this Call at least four other groups will be invited to the Festival. Beside the invite, at least one of these groups will receive, through the call, the opportunity for a co-production.

Every year the festival will invite twelve artistic formation, offering around two dozen plays during the four/five days of the week the Festival will last. Every year there will be a European theatre company. There will be at least three play daily, with no overlapping between the plays. Every year the Festival will produce and co-produce at least one play.

The plays will be set both outside and inside. Great importance will have the places where the plays will be set. Sure that the places themselves can be core of the relationship between creator and spectator, we will pay careful attention to the places where the different events will be played. Sometimes, play will be built around the place itself, as it is with site specific plays, other times the place will be found based on the needs of the play. There will be standard 'theatrical places', but also churches, private homes, hotel halls, buses, galleries, cloisters, shop windows, schools, institutions. The ticket price will be the lowest possible that can be offered, in order to permit access to the greatest number of people.

Last but not least, as it is tradition for OPERA PRIMA, every year there will be a conference/round table discussion that will put into focus some of the hottest debates around the Italian theatre, thanks to exchanges and discussions with critics, experts and theatre professionals.

Even though the Festival lasts only one week, we want to involve the city the whole year, with small ideas on the side. We don't want a Festival that begins and ends in a single, albeit full, week, but that goes on and on from a project to the other, waiting for the party to begin.

LAST ORATION

One should know Rovigo (but how many Rovigo are there, in Italy?) to really understand how difficult has been and how difficult will be to create a contemporary art Festival in a city that it so marginal and culturally behind. But as Claudio Meldolesi said during the Conference "Ardore e Disincanto" here in Rovigo in 2002: "...It's like the wild rose Brecht sang about in a great poem: the wild rose that no one expected to grow because it didn't come from a vase and it didn't shine in a living room: it's only in the outskirts of the world that theatre can be born again". This is why we believe in the possibility that something new will find its place right here in our city, outside of cultural strongholds: the most important thing to do is still safeguards emergencies, keeping open places and spaces so that the unexpected can be born.