Add the Gazzetta del Sud as a source
Looking at the present without screens, without alibis, without a safe distance. Observing bodies on stage, stories that are offered to the spectator, witnessing moments of real sharing, between words, signs, sounds, to find ourselves as a community. Building a festival, taking part in it, year after year, is a precious and necessary action, especially in complex times like the ones we are going through. And precious and necessary, year after year, is Primavera dei Teatri, Festival of new languages of the contemporary scene, now in its 26th edition, scheduled in Castrovillari, from next Tuesday to Sunday.
The festival, conceived and directed by Dario De Luca and Saverio La Ruina of the Scena Verticale company, this year offers over 35 events including theatre, dance, artistic residencies, national premieres and previews, music, meetings, workshops and exhibitions, to continue to present itself as a place of exhibition and questioning rather than a simple exhibition. A field of forces in which scenic practices do not illustrate the world, but pass through it as it happens.
This 2026 edition is dedicated to Laura Palmieri, Giancarlo Cauteruccio and Goffredo Fofi: three figures who, in different and profound ways, have intertwined their human and intellectual path with that of Primavera dei Teatri, sharing over time its vision, ethical tension and cultural responsibility; a proximity made not only of esteem, but of listening, discussion and mutual affection, which contributed to defining the very identity of the festival as a living space of relationship, thought and community. «There have been darker times, but this is certainly dark – declare the artistic directors De Luca and La Ruina – a time in which you ask yourself what value and what meaning your work, your action, your commitment to culture have, in this immaterial thing that seems so distant from the concreteness of reality. But today, in this world that is not well, we must continue to cultivate the spirit. And it is with this “spirit” that we are going to present the XXVI edition of Primavera dei Teatri”.
A dense program, a theatrical geography that crosses different spaces of the city and transforms them into places of listening and producing meaning. Starting from the first day of the festival, Tuesday 26th, marked by the results of residencies and the national preview of the artist Luna Cenere with «Agape», a choreographic lexicon that questions proximity, relationship and tension between gesture and community. May 28th is marked by the return of the Teatro delle Ariette which with «We are a minestrone» leads into the dimension of long time and physical proximity between artists and the public, then in the national premiere «Dolls from Collection» by Erika Fusini which features an all-female team of very young artists; the Sicilians Giuseppe Provinzano and Giuseppe Massa with «Sutta Scupa» propose, again in the national premiere, a new staging after twenty years, to deal with time and its changes.
The hosts of Scena Verticale will instead be on stage on the 29th with the new project by Saverio La Runa, «KR70M16 – Naufrago senza nome», a show that debuted last January, which sees La Ruina on stage together with Dario De Luca and Cecilai Foti, for a delicate and profound fresco on the theme of memory which insists on the responsibility of testimony, while on May 30th Dario De Luca presents the national premiere of «Le Tre Cicoriane», which completes the happy trilogy on the Calabrian fairy tale.
In the national premiere, Quotidiana.com with «I would like to die I don’t know how to do» (Premio Tuttoteatro.com for the scenic arts “Dante Cappelletti”) will deal with the theme of the end of life with a lucid and unsettling gaze. On May 31st the restitution of the residence of Cecilia Foti, an artist from Messina, is expected, with «La Questione dell’imbuto», on stage with Nunzia Lo Presti, which places itself within the very making of scenic writing, making its unstable status visible.
The program then extends beyond the stage program into a constellation of meetings, book presentations, debates to give voice to stories of yesterday and today. Indispensable.