ricci/forte carries quite some weight in the The ways theatre changed over the last few years international cultural world. Of high culture, and able to make themselves understood by the many, the two curators use words to make symphonies. They sign their work as ricci/forte, in small letters, but there’s nothing small about what they do. Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte have been awarded the Hystrio, Vallecorsi, Fondi-La Pastora, Studio 12, Oddone Cappel- lin, and Gibellina/Salvo Randone prizes. This coming Theatre Biennale will be their second as curators. Its programme will include work by the most experienced theatre people in the world as well as production by Biennale College, the educational arm of Biennale. Their choices as curators goes beyond avantgarde theatre to find again the pure essence of theatre. In what they do, there is the material that made past editions of the Biennale memorable. The upcoming fiftieth edition has been named with a German word, Rot, a scathing sound that means red. The Festival will be a mirror that vibrates in unison with the world, that will listen to what changes in society, that will have as primary mis- sions Creation and Transmission. A hardy Festival, impervious to the slings of cynicism and chronic catastrophism, that will show the way for a better future. Rot rebels against superficiality, false idols, and opportunism.

The ways theatre changed over the last few years
COVID paralyzed the world and paused our social lives. The places of culture and education were hit particularly hard due to enforced distancing and shutdowns. They are still paying dearly. However, theatre lives on, and will keep on going down its road if it wants to keep true to its essence and identity. It is a unique live experience, necessary for the existence and survival of democrat- ic society. Theatre feeds the soul and is the master key to interpret the present, and will stubbornly infuse existential awareness in a way real and virtual life cannot; it will be the place where commu- nities come back to compose themselves, tell their stories, reveal themselves, and find responsibility. A place where history and future meet and embrace.

Creation and Transmission
We are not fond of compromise, and as art directors, what we want to do is bridge together cultures and generations. We will sponsor young talents and support their needs, help them find the ground to establish their roots, and make their projects known to the larger public. The Biennale will be a factory of creation, a workshop for experimentation, a place of welcome and openness for the new dreammakers who will live it.

New languages and new authors for the general public
In a way, crisis and change, the uncertainty of meaningless present, a threatening future before us – all urge us to find new and other languages, hybrid and poetical, as well as they justify posi- tions that might be extreme. We need antidotes to escape the strategy of ignorance, the smothering pessimism that attacks us continually. Our pro- gramme for the 50th Theatre Biennale, as well as the shows that we produced over the last several years, will try to respond to these changes with strong bouts of lucidity. They will feed the civic conscience that all too often we hide away, due to laziness or conformity. By anticipating the dangers of a fractured society, the Biennale will use trans- versality, currency, and diversity to address a stratified audience. We want to invite our audience to come travel with us and we want to show our younger public how its magnetic drive will awe, question, and shape what could happen to force them to react and build their own destiny. Theatre will make new trajectories of the real erupt in the open and help our outlook forward, beyond the limits of the habitual and the visible. It will give the audience a sort of map for a treasure hunt of ideas and set free an inter-world, an image of diversity and dynamism.

Fragile present, and thought
People make history. By analysing the present and by using the lost and found objects of the past, those of us who are aware try to filter it all into motion. By doing this, they decode the meaning of what is happening and feel the breath of the action.

A mental map after Biennale
We’ll go back to Thought; we’ll go back to sharing. The need for reconstruction has no use for dissi- pated paths. All it takes to discover confrontation is to have the right mindset in listening to the other. Amazement will help us out of the armour of deaf convictions that is now shutting us in.

The presence of women
In our non-binary epoch, speaking of male and female seems pleonastic. The world is now on its way to be a neutral or liquid expression that, at long last, dismantles prejudicial, identarian old ideas and will sanction the absolute value (both in itself and all the more so when we talk about art) of non-identification in preordained categories. All of this will bring about wealth and diversity of vision, respect, and maturity to an individual that is strongly set in their present.