Racconti per Ricominciare: The Sunset Tales Theatre Festival

Eco-friendly Theatre Festival

Created and realized by Vesuvioteatro, “Racconti per Ricominciare” is a multi-venue eco-friendly performing arts festival that takes place in National Cultural Heritage in Campania, South of Italy. During the Festival, some of the most evocative locations in Campania are transformed into natural theaters for site-specific performances staged at sunset, in perfect symbiosis both with ancient architectures and natural landscapes. We want to give life to a creative inspirational process throughout an immersive artistic and poetic experience that takes place in our heritage sites, where the power of Nature is strictly connected with the History, Arts, Beauty and Greatness.

The staging is mainly realized without electronic equipment and/or artificial lights, it aims to match the European challenges on environmental sustainability: each performance is immersed in the natural light of the sunset and the sound of the environment.
 We don't build stages or sets in order to not to disturb the architectural and natural landscape of the heritage site. We work with local artists and local professional theatre companies in order to avoid travels and to valorize artists of our territory.

Focus on International Contemporary Drama

Each year we work with foreign partners in order to promote and diffuse in Italy contemporary authors of different nationalities who are not known or even inedited in our country. We devote a section of the festival to international authors by translating and adapting their texts in our site-specific performances, with the support of different international partners.

This year, the festival offers two different performances devoted to international contemporary drama.The first performance is devoted to Austrian and German dramaturgy, and is realized at Museo Nazionale Ferroviario di Pietrarsa (National Railway Museum of Pietrarsa) in collaboration and with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Rome and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Rome, and with the participation of the Goethe- Institut of Naples and of the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the ROMA TRE University. Throughout a process made of conversations and meetings between the festival artistic direction and all the partners involved, the working table has selected three very interesting ‘voices of Europe’ not very well known or rather completely unpublished in Italy. They bring with them the breath of a different approach to reality and interpret the urgencies of the contemporary world through the disturbing and dreamlike lens of the surreal. Eva Menasse, Alois Hotschnig and Kathrin Röggla will lead us to worlds populated by anthropomorphic and zoomorphic characters, dreams and bewilderments that give us back the fullness and extraordinary nature of our seemingly normal lives.The Italian translation of the texts by Alois Hotschnig and Kathrin Röggla, has been realized by students of the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the ROMA TRE University, with the supervision of Prof. Giovanni Sampaolo.

The second international performance is devoted to contemporary dramaturgy of Québec.Thanks to the Delegation of Québec in Rome, we met the playwright and theatre director Sébastien David, a very interesting voice of the Quebec theater universe, who welcomed the idea of allowing us to stage one of his most dreamlike and imaginative texts, “Une fille en or”. Unedited in Italy, translated in Italian by Luca Bondioli, it is a contemporary surreal tale that has its roots in ancient myth.

Dates of the Festival: from May 23 to June 11 in 14 heritage sites in Campania, Italy.

For further information:  https://www.vesuvioteatro.org/racconti-per-ricominciare/