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Twelve award winners, twelve theater stories. Different artistic paths that met on the stage of the Ancient Theater of Taormina for an evening dedicated to the theatre, its protagonists and its history. The Theater Festival, organized by the Taormina Arte Sicilia Foundation, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the 1976 Festival, which in the materials of the time appears as “I International Festival” and which saw the Living Theater among the protagonists, ideally retracing a history that linked Taormina to some of the big names on the scene.
At the center of the evening was the TaoArte International Prize for Theatre, awarded to Gabriele Lavia, Mariangela D’Abbraccio, Elisabetta Pozzi, Marisa Laurito, Manuel Agnelli, Vincenzo Pirrotta, Marcello Cesena, Ester Pantano, Nicola Rubertelli, Marco Savatteri, Giampiero Solari and Giancarlo Zanetti.
The evening, hosted by the artistic director Simona Celi together with Beppe Convertini, accompanied the public through the different moments of the Award, alternating deliveries, stories and performances. Twelve personalities, from acting to directing, from music to scenography, from production to cultural planning, united by a profound relationship with the stage and with the different languages of entertainment. Not a simple succession of awards, but an evening built through the protagonists themselves. Words, poetry, readings, music, singing, acting and theater stories accompanied the presentation of the awards, transforming the Award into a choral story in which each artist shared a fragment of their journey with the public.
The performance of the performers of the show “Il Risveglio degli Dei” by Marco Savatteri was also particularly evocative, while the closing of the evening was entrusted to Manuel Agnelli, who sang his song “Milano con la peste”.
In particular, the awards aimed to restore the plurality of theater and the professionalism that contributes to building it. From Gabriele Lavia’s path, also linked to the history of Taormina Arte, to Mariangela D’Abbraccio’s research on women’s stories; from the theater as a tool for reading the life and history of Elisabetta Pozzi to the artistic transversality of Marisa Laurito. And again the meeting between music, words and stage by Manuel Agnelli, Vincenzo Pirrotta’s work on the Sicilian language, the contemporary masks of Marcello Cesena and the theatrical path of Ester Pantano.
The Award also recognized the work of those who contribute to the construction of the show through other languages and professionalism: the scenography of Nicola Rubertelli, the cultural planning of Marco Savatteri, the path between show, production and relationship with the audience of Giampiero Solari and the experience of Giancarlo Zanetti in the support and creation of theatrical productions and projects.
The awards were presented during the evening by the Extraordinary Commissioner of the Taormina Arte Sicilia Foundation Bernardo Campo, Gabriele Crociata, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Regional Department of Tourism, Sport and Entertainment of the Sicilian Region, the Police Commissioner of Messina Salvatore La Rosa and the president of Taobuk, Antonella Ferrara.
«Looking with confidence to the future, starting from the roots of that cultural path inaugurated in Taormina with the 1976 Festival, means renewing the commitment so that the great theater returns to being central for the Ancient Theater of Taormina – declares the Extraordinary Commissioner of the Taormina Arte Sicilia Foundation, Bernardo Campo. A strategic objective which on the occasion of this important anniversary we wanted to translate into an event of the highest importance, capable of bringing together artistic personalities of different generations and languages on the same stage to tell the living force of art through its true protagonists, giving life to a truly unrepeatable event, to the point that those who were not present missed something unique and unrepeatable, an evening which due to its richness of content and quality had the depth and strength of a great television format, thus rising well beyond the dimension of the mere awards ceremony to lay the programmatic foundations and ideals of a new and lasting season of cultural growth for the entire community, hoped for by all the great artists present”.
«The Ancient Theater of Taormina represents one of the most prestigious places of entertainment in Sicily and must continue to be a space for proposals – underlines Gabriele Crociata, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Regional Department of Tourism, Sport and Entertainment and Extraordinary Commissioner of the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra Foundation –. From this perspective, an ever greater synergy between the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra Foundation and the Taormina Arte Sicilia Foundation is desirable, two important regional institutions which, together, can contribute to quality programming and the valorisation of symbolic places of culture and entertainment in Sicily”.