VAJONTS for a Civil Choral Prayer

On the evening of Monday, October 9, 2023, on the 60th anniversary of the Vajont landslide that claimed the lives of 2000 people, Marco Paolini’s famous monologue will become a choral narrative that will involve over 100 theaters simultaneously in Italy and Europe: VajontS for a Choral Civil Oration.

Actors, theater school students, musicians and dancers, stagehands, theater staff, and enlisted spectators will gather in various places, from the Strehler in Milan to small provincial theaters, to locations not specifically dedicated to theater such as schools and water plants, and each will create their own staging of VajontS based on the specificities of their territory.

Do you want to participate as a reader?
We’ll be waiting for you in Goldonetta on Monday, September 25th at 6:00 PM.
Info: 0586.204206 – segreteria.laboratori@goldoniteatro.it

VajontS, Marco Paolini’s story becomes a chorus
100 theaters in a grand live event on October 9, 2023, 60 years after the tragedy

Thirty years ago, Marco Paolini’s The Vajont Story was his voice and body. On the evening of Monday, October 9, 2023, on the 60th anniversary of the Vajont landslide that claimed the lives of 2000 people, it will become a choral narrative that will involve over 100 theaters simultaneously in Italy and Europe: VajontS for a Choral Civil Oration. Great actors and theater school students, resident theaters and experimental theater companies, musicians and dancers, stagehands, theater staff, and enlisted spectators will gather in various places, from the Strehler in Milan to small provincial theaters, to locations not specifically dedicated to theater such as schools and water plants, and each will create their own staging of VajontS based on the specificities of their territory. And then, everyone will pause at 10:39 PM, the time when the mountain collapsed into the dam.

The goal is an action of civil theater that addresses the challenge of the climate crisis. Water and the Vajont tragedy become a starting point for initiating “civil prevention practices”.

This is explained by Marco Paolini, who in recent months has rallied Italian theater: “Earthquakes are not yet predictable, floods are more so, as well as droughts. The Italian territory is anthropically dense like a hardworking and insatiable anthill. We consume land, we consume soil, and a good part of that soil is at hydrogeological risk. With every catastrophe, we hear repeated words that do not prevent others. We are not scientists, nor engineers, nor judges. But we know that storytelling activates the most powerful algorithm of our species: feelings, emotions. Levers that leave lasting marks, levers that bring those who are far away closer. They are the glue of a social body, and now we need them to face what awaits us. It is not difficult to imagine that there will be other emergencies. And so, alongside the Civil Protection, we need Civil Prevention. A choral event can give emotion to the courage to face the challenge of the consequences of climate warming. It can give emotion to reason and wisdom in choosing interventions based on the principle of safeguarding life, health, the common good, and risk reduction.”

The story of Vajont, rewritten and heard 25 years after the television account, is no longer a story of memory and social denunciation, but speaks of today, of us, and our future: it teaches what underestimating a risk means, facing it relying on the calculation of the least dangerous hypothesis among many. Among many discarded because they were inconceivable, not impossible.
On the evening of October 9th, Marco Paolini will be one of the voices bringing the story to life from the Strehler Theater in Milan. The choir, called together over months of work by the Promoting Committee of Fabbrica del Mondo and by the Vajont Foundation, crosses the entire Italian theater and is still growing because anyone can decide to join the network.
Among the Resident Theaters, in addition to the Piccolo Theater in Milan, the Veneto Theater, the Turin Theater, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Theater, the Bolzano Theater, Sardegna Theater, and the Umbria Theater will participate in VajontS choir.
They will be joined by historic experimental theater companies such as CSS Theater Company of Innovation in Udine, Lost Academy/Romagna Theaters, Fontemaggiore Theater in Perugia, Ravenna Theater, Atlantide Foundation in Verona, La Contrada in Trieste, Assemblea Theater in Turin, Vetrano-Randisi Company, Cada Die Theater in Cagliari, Crest in Taranto, Casa del Contemporaneo in Naples, Kismet and Tric Theaters in Bari, Artisti Associati Gradisca, Arca Azzurra Theater, Coop Teatro Lanciavicchio, Inti Theater Company in Brindisi.
VajontS will be simultaneously recited in theaters throughout the peninsula (Donizetti Theater in Bergamo, Koreja in Lecce, Brancaccio Theater in Rome, Puccini Theater in Florence, Villa dei Leoni in Mira, Verdi Theater in Pordenone, Astra Theater in Vicenza, Nuovo Theater in Verona, Nuovo Giovanni Theater in Udine, Campo Teatrale, Cooperativa Theater, Litta Theater, and Verdi Theater in Milan, Real Santa Cecilia Theater in Palermo, Limonaia in Sesto Fiorentino, Goldoni Theater in Livorno in addition to the many theaters in the ATER Emilia Romagna Foundation circuits, Casa del Contemporaneo in Naples, RES Theater Network, ERT Friuli Venezia Giulia, and Costellazioni Collective in Brescia) and in some special places such as the former Pini psychiatric hospital in Milan, water plants, Hangar 11 in Belluno, a classroom at the Polytechnic University of Milan, and the Readers Club in Turin.
Some companies that have shaped generations with their theater for children, such as Pandemonium Theater, Testoni Theater – La Baracca, Buratto Theater, Giallo Mare Minimal Theater, Aida Foundation, La Piccionaia, Catalyst, and other young experimental theater companies such as Capotrave in Sansepolcro, TOP Teatri Off in Padua, and Farmacia Zooé, will become interpreters of VajontS.

The narrative will also cross Italian borders with performances in Paris, Edinburgh, and Geneva.