The Umbrian summer is enriched with culture and entertainment with Verdecoprente Umbria Fest 2024, an event that celebrates the creativity and landscape of the Amerino territory. The festival, organized by the Ippocampo Association and directed by Roberto Giannini and Rossella Viti, offers four months of shows, meetings, workshops and immersive experiences, in close collaboration with local communities. Until August 2, the Verdecoprente Umbria Fest transforms emblematic places such as Civitella del Lago, the Hermitage of Santa Illuminata and the paths of Palliccio into living stages, where theater, dance, performing arts and multimedia artists from all over Italy present their works. The event winds through the municipalities of Amelia, Attigliano, Giove, Alviano, Lugnano in Teverina, Guardea, Montecchio and Baschi, involving urban and natural spaces, villages, hamlets, oil mills and cellars. Together with one of the artistic directors, Rossella Viti, we reflect on the importance of theatre as a tool for connecting artists, spectators and places, creating traces that enrich our understanding and appreciation of the environment.
Strologhe, “Aiko e l’Orso della Luna Bianca”, ph. Rossella Viti, courtesy Verdecoprente Umbria Fest
Antonella Buttazzo: What is the main concept behind Verdecoprente Umbria Fest and how does it integrate with local territories and communities?
Rossella Viti: Verdecoprente Umbria Fest is a festival idea born in continuity with the Verdecoprente residenze project, active since 2012, supported by the idea of exchange and mutual nourishment between the performing arts and the communities encountered during the creation process, or between artistic production and the territory that temporarily hosts the project. Verdecoprente is a cultural, artistic, poetic and political action, with which we have chosen to dedicate ourselves to the landscapes that nourish us, spaces in which cultures and natures meet taking shape in the languages of the scenes, the arts, the poetics of the contemporary. Theatres acted, spoken, sung and danced, performances, environments and sound and visual paths, installations, multimedia and site specific creations, there are many writings that come into play to inhabit and be inhabited, explore, rework, to narrate with the territory that hosts them. A vision that wants to overcome the ‘border’ between disciplines and artistic genres, between the natural and the constructed, between the product of the earth and the product of man, mixing intentions and experiences in the name of a new creative, artistic, human, trans-disciplinary writing. For a scene that wants the actor’s voice as much as his dance, seeks his action and silence, his body and its virtual, sees images in the absence of light, scrutinizes shadows through a thought. Full and empty, theater without a building and music with an invisible instrument. To the poetry of the “landscape that becomes theater”, a concept and image suggested by Eugenio Turri, we respond with a theater that becomes landscape, that nourishes us and reflects us, in the chaos of life, in the order of death. Working inside and outside these landscapes we try to find, travel, build roads that are tools and means with which to navigate the complexity of the present. Moving by sea and by land, between landings in known artistic territories and in unknown lands, between solitary navigations and life rafts where we are all together.
Isola di Confine, “Pulcinellesco”, ph. Rossella Viti, courtesy Verdecoprente Umbria Fest
What are the main novelties and highlights of this edition of the festival?
The 2024 program is dedicated to the theme of “Footprints”, thinking of both the material and immaterial traces that a show always carries with it, in every context in which it is performed. In this sense, the project intends to underline how a live show, with the creative process that supports it, involves and envelops actors, spectators and places, illuminating the footprints that arise from their relationship, which remain a trace of our fully and responsibly living the world and the environment of which we are part. The festival follows three main tracks. The first is expressly dedicated, for the first time, to shows designed for children and adolescents. So here they come, in order of appearance: Zizola- ti voglio bene come il sale, a re-edition of one of our works (Ippocampo) created for the little patients of the Bambino Gesù Hospital in Rome, Aiko and the Bear of the White Moon, shadow theatre and narration by Strologhe, Tempo by tardito/rendina, who also guided us in a poetic workshop for children and adults together and, finally, the Little Prince by Matutateatro. With Pulcinellesco by Isola di Confine, presented in an oil mill, the second track begins, which is based on shows and performances revealed by the landscape; here the relationship between who, what and where is in the foreground: the show is a ‘theatre’ of meetings of the celebrating communities, an invitation to feel part of a scenic microcosm that modifies our perception of the event. With Fiesta, which Teatro Due Mondi brings to the stage in two villages never inhabited by Verdecoprente until now: a small one, Civitella Del Lago, and a very small one, Foce. With Icaro, following the trail of Azul Teatro, at the Eremo di Santa Illuminata di Guardea, and with Lirica del paesaggio, which is also the opportunity to enter for the first time the centuries-old olive grove of Rajo, now also protected as a Slow Food Presidium of Amelia. A special feature of the program is the call “Ma tu mi ascolti?” launched as part of the VUF2024 collaboration with the partners Artéco and FKL, to find a “Belsentire Place” in the area, which will be reported and described on the national map curated by the partners who deal with landscapes and sound research. An idea that takes us to Sentiero di Palliccio, where the nomination is welcomed by the voices of two choirs created with the territorial communities. Accompanied by ancient instruments such as the Chinese harp, Marco Schiavoni in Senza Tempo, and the interactive installation il Libro abitato, born from Verdecoprente Book, are the sign of the ten-year collaboration with the Archaeological Museum of Amelia, the installation accompanies the European Night of Museums. The third track, the most unusual, hides a performative soul in immersive and multi-sensorial experiences, in which the spectator is called to active participation. They are physical and imaginary paths that move to compose new visual and sound landscapes, also with the support of the technological element. We find in this track: Il Gioco dei cercatori di storie – Orienteering Drama, connected to the orientation and listening game-path of Lugnano in Teverina, created by Ippocampo in 2020 as a way of inhabiting a village by reworking it in a sort of ‘augmented reality’; in the same village the Dadaist Walk conceived and led by Michele Pascarella moved, inspired by paths ‘without traces to follow and leave’, designed to inhabit and smell the places, recognize their signs, rewriting them in the individual and collective physical experience. The relationship with the work and the places of local agri-food production is then explored with #1 Parole da mangiare (trilogia della terra), first action and new production of Al passo, which comes to life, and closes the festival on August 2, in the partner companies of Amerino Tipico.
Michele Pascarella, “Passeggiata Dadaista”, ph. Rossella Viti, courtesy Verdecoprente Umbria Fest
In what ways does the festival encourage active interaction with the public, especially in the natural and historical locations that host the events?
With Verdecoprente the scene is revealed in a multitude of landscapes. Here the landscapes are those created by man and nature, dug by history, nourished by tradition, offended in the name of progress, rediscovered by passions, which present themselves as places of strength and tension in which local communities, their cultural and social identities, are reflected over time. The theatre performance is proposed as an experience capable of modifying the spectator’s perception of himself, of the known environment, of space, of relationships that are believed to be fixed and immutable, even between people. Bringing new visions and creating the conditions for people to feel free to share their own, enriching them. The residencies and the festival take place in an inter-municipal area, involving several municipalities of the Umbria-Amerino area with their landscapes, a term that I use here in its various meanings of cultural, human, social, urban and rural, wild (which however does not exist), morphological, historical and artistic, economic and entrepreneurial landscape. The area we are talking about is a dynamic territory in constant evolution, which seems to be made to welcome contemporary creation, unusual and original in its performative languages, techniques and aesthetics, as well as in the practices through which it encounters, crosses and explores imaginary and real territories.
Matuteatro, “Piccolo Principe”, ph. Rossella Viti, courtesy Verdecoprente Umbria Fest
How does Verdecoprente Umbria Fest commit to promoting culture and the arts in a family-friendly and inclusive context, as indicated by the “Umbria Culture for family” accreditation?
Our commitment is to offer new and renewed ‘readings’ of scenic creation, to create opportunities to open and implement the participation of younger audiences and family groups, understood as intergenerational units, whether small or large. In our programming we therefore choose functional paths to stimulate curiosity and interest in live performance in its relationships with the landscape, local communities and territorial identities. On the one hand to underline the importance that the communities themselves give to their own cultural and environmental heritage, on the other to broaden this view to include the interdisciplinary forms and languages of scenic creation and their representation in unconventional places for the theatre. Making an artistic creation live in a specific place, giving life to a new landscape of which the spectator is an active part, this means for us to place art and culture as a ‘common good’, to emphasize how much each of us can do to safeguard and multiply our heritage, both material and immaterial. For this reason, we try to plan experiences, shows that include the views of young and old spectators, asking everyone to ‘share’ visions and reading tools. There are then some very concrete elements to pay attention to, as it is underlined by the specifications of “Umbria Culture for family”, from the services provided at the performance site to its degree of accessibility. Bringing the show to unconventional spaces, outside of theaters and often in natural spaces, this is a very important aspect for us to take into account at the beginning of each program.
Teatro Ippocampo, “Zizola- ti voglio bene come il sale”, ph. Luisa Romussi, courtesy Verdecoprente Umbria Fest
What are the long-term goals of Verdecoprente Umbria Fest in terms of cultural and social impact on the territories involved?
We have reached the thirteenth year of the Verdecoprente project, not counting the 00 edition, and this means a lot. Continuity is essential for a territory to perceive your presence as stable, decisive, incisive. The feeling is that you have to be convincing, I would say ‘credible’ as Stanislawskij said to the actors. And so here it opens up how much Verdecoprente Umbria Fest can and wants to mean in terms of culture for the territory, a new way of experiencing the show, close to the gaze of the people and far from fashions and narrow gender codifications. Being a mark of amazement and letting it be inhabited by others. In the territory, which is alive and always in motion, the people you manage to intercept are few compared to the potential of the project. A project that, I remember, is also divided into artistic residences and moves in several municipal territories, under public and private management. Complications and carelessness are always around the corner. To work on continuity, we wanted Verdecoprente Umbria Fest 2024 to be so structured and extended in space and time, 19 events, and 21 days of programming, divided into eight municipalities, from April to August. Expectation and permanent objective is to make Verdecoprente a project to which to give greater stability, solid foundations on which to develop and experiment with new paths. Time is needed to implement real co-planning with other entities that operate on the territory, local and national, with specific actions and roles. It is necessary to give yourself time to renew your motivations: thinking, curating and organizing a project of welcoming and hosting artistic realities is very demanding, it is creating an expectation, touching the right chords, trying to harmonize, before, during and after the festival, trying to understand not only what went better or worse, but how to better promote what you are doing. To continue weaving this web, you need to listen, inside and outside of yourself and ask yourself what footprints you are leaving.
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After obtaining the high school languages diploma, she continued her studies graduating in Art History at the University of Salento, with a bilingual thesis on the Pre-Raphaelites. Since then, she has been actively contributing as a columnist and collaborator with national blogs and with local magazines and TV programs.
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