What can authorial
theater do today?
We asked ourselves this question on the first day we performed. We continue to ask it after more than 40 years in theater. Ours is the story of an open question.
The answer
of puppets and objects
The codes, automatics, and mannerisms of institutional theater left us perplexed. The stage interested us because it could unite arts, reformulate languages, and connect disruptively with people.
What could Pulcinella have achieved if he had been a puppet and the author was his puppeteer? This was the prelude to our poetics, which began with an incursion into puppet theater and never quite concluded.
We liked the puppets because they asked questions. First, we made them; then, they spoke to us, like Pinocchio, suggesting characters, roles, and interpretations. And about them, they asked our opinion, personal, unique, and authorial.
We then did the same with objects. Consumer society was delivering them lifeless, but to us, they seemed alive. In them, we found all the suggestions we sought to deviate from the norm and reflect on theater in our way.
The author's body
and the wisdom of the child
It then became difficult to understand whether we were manipulating the objects or the objects manipulating us. Indeed, it was they who brought our bodies onto the stage. We were not fond of showing ourselves, but they said, “Why? You are like us.” So, we did not step onto the stage as actors but as objects among objects.
Provocative and seductive, for contemplation and reflection, our author's body revealed itself to us and the eyes of the audience. Puppet body, furniture body. Placed body, exposed body. Body as ground for inscription, body as reason for inspiration.
Fundamental in those years was the relationship with childhood, not only in children’s theater. For us, the child was not just an audience member but also a travel companion to reflect on theater.
Their perplexities, their insights, and their thousand skills nourished our poetics. From them, we conceived our works; to them, we returned to receive their refined and stern judgment. In any case, the author they returned to us was bare.
We owe infinite aesthetic choices to the child's wisdom: from the abolition of “the theater’s fourth wall” to anti-intellectualism, from attention to form to a dramaturgy always between fiction and reality.
Theater beyond theater
The economic crisis of 2007 was also the crisis of our theater: shorter tours, smaller
productions, and reduced opportunities for expression. We no longer had the space we once
did. And so, space became our problem: what could the author do outside of the theater?
They could listen to other spaces, as they had listened to puppets, objects, and children.
Thus began our para-theatrical forays into non-theatrical spaces: museums, monuments, homes, and cities. In these places, however, we did not bring our dramaturgy. On the contrary, the places brought theirs, helping us to rethink our condition as authors.
This is how we discovered ourselves as visitors. As such, we loved to present ourselves to our audience. We were visitors among visitors who, together with them, observed, showed, discovered and questioned, offering many points of view.
Our theater had always been militant, but the years of this “theater beyond theater” showed its necessity more than ever. We did not want to stop, nor were we interested in resisting, because the insatiable curiosity of our audience, which never ceased to surprise us, suggested one thing only: to insist.
And so we insisted.
An ongoing dialogue
More than forty years after the birth of the Piccoli Principi, we find that throughout our
activity, we have never pledged fidelity to genres, bent to clients' expectations, nor ever
pleased our audience.
Ours has not been a search for consensus but for confrontation, to
steal, rework, and return the author’s viewpoint to a permanently open dialogue with the
audience.
Therefore, we must continue to ask ourselves: what can authorial theater do
today?
1979
- Alessandro Libertini founds the Piccoli Principi
1981
- Debut of the show Pulcinella ed Euridice.
1982
- Chiara Fantini joins the Company
- First prize at the International Festival Arrivano dal mare in Cervia with Pulcinella ed Euridice.
- Participation in the Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes di Charleville-Mézières.
1983
- Debut of the show Così Mi piace.
1984
- Stregagatto Award for Così mi piace.
- Debut of the show Deviazioni dalla Norma.
1985
- Participation in the International Festival of Theatre for Young Audiences in Montreal
- Debut of the show Narciso Amico Mio.
1986
- Véronique Nah joins the Company
- Debut of the show Kinderszenen at
Teatro della Scala di Milano.
1987
- Narciso Amico Mio at the Biennale du Théâtre Jeunes Publics in Lyon.
- Narciso Amico Mio al Youth Theater Festival di Helsinki.
1988
- Debut of the show Una Cosa per un’Altra.
1989
- Debut of the show Dodici.
1992
- Dodici restaged in Belgium with Belgian actors.
1994
- Debut of the show A Partire da Miles.
1995
- Una cosa per un’Altra restaged by the Blauw Vier company in Antwerp.
- A partire da Miles finalist at the Stregagatto Award 95/96.
1996
- ETI/Camera d'Oro Award for the video Oltre i cavalli del Partenone.
1997
- A partire da Miles performed at La Cité de la • Musique di Parigi.
- A partire da Miles performed at the Europa Jazz • Festival in Le Mans.
2000
- Babele performed at Porto.
- Debut of La Magia delle Immagini al Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain di Saint-Étienne
2001
- Direction of the show De tooverfluit with the company Het muziek Lod di Gent.
2002
- Premio Prix des régionales al Festival Internazional Momix con La magia delle immagini
2004
- Workshop at the Musée d'art Moderne et contemporain in Strasbourg
- Workshop at the Musée de l'Opéra in Notre-Dame
- Debut of the show Il Risveglio di Sirenetta in Madrid
2006
- La magia delle immagini at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris
- Debut of the show Celeste all’Osservatorio Astrofisico
di Firenze - Debut of the show Con gli occhi di Pinocchio at the Festivaletteratura in Mantova
2007
- Debut of the show BaBa .
- BaBa at the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon.
2008
- Obraztsov a Bochum, Mosca, San Pietroburgo.
2009
- BaBa in Romania, Con gli occhi di Pinocchio Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles.
2010
- BaBa at MADRE in Naples
BaBa in Finland, Germany, Canada, and Portugal
2011
- BaBa , Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Rivoli; Madrid; Vienna.
2012
- BaBa , Hasselt, Belgio.
- Io diversa at the Festival Météores in Brussels.
- Visita in forma di spettacolo at the Centro Luigi Pecci in Prato.
- Visita in forma di spettacolo at the Museo Stibbert in Florence.
- Visita in forma di spettacolo at the Museo Marino Marini in Florence.
- Visita in forma di spettacolo at the SMS Santa Maria della Scala in Siena.
- Visita in forma spettacolo Archaeologican Museum in Artimino.
2013
- Debut of the show Umami in Marseille, European Capital of Culture 2013.
2014
- Collaboration with the Accademia della Crusca for the Festival Dante 2021.
2015
- Ritagli al Festival internazionale di Bruxelles.
- Ritagli al Festivaletteratura di Mantova.
2016
- Visita in forma di spettacolo at the De Chirico in Ferrara exhibition.
2017
- Creation of the show Scientifico!
- Ritagli at the Biennale Internationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Paris.
- Ritagli at the International Bim Bam Festival in Salzburg.
2018
- Ritagli in Jaipur and Kolkata.
- Ritagli WeeFestival di Toronto.
2019
- Visite in forma di spettacolo at the Museo Casa Siviero in Florence.
- Debut of the show Calderone immaginario at Le Pôle in Le Revest-les-Eaux, in collaboration with the Musée d’Art de
de Toulon.
2023
- The Institute for Puppetry Arts and Popular Theatre in Grugliasco hosts Figuriamoci!
