The meeting has been held for the last 14 years at the Teatro Ridotto in Bologna, Italy, by Lina Della Rocca, the director, and usually involved only Italian companies. After Ornella and Lina met last May, they decided to hold the meeting in France this year, and for the first time make it an international festival. It was a huge amount of organizational work for Ornella and TAC Teatro, but with the support of the city of Aubervilliers, she pulled it off. What a week!
What discoveries! Oh, yeah, and what a lack of sleep! But all worth it. There were more than 30 performers from all around the world, and my job was to film and photograph the whole thing for TAC Teatro , and eventually I will make a little documentary out of the more than 1, files I accumulated film, sound and photos over the five days of the meeting.
First, let me note the companies and people present in addition to TAC and Teatro Ridotto: dinner at finestre. The artists stayed in either hotel rooms provided by Aubervilliers, or at the homes of volunteer families of Aubervilliers that are in the habit of working together to house visitors during events in the city.
What a great collaboration between the city and the companies. Ornella Bonventre from back directing work at Finestre. Their own existence is resistance. They might work with ritual, politics, in alternative spaces like schools or prisons. Throughout the week the companies worked together showing their various methods of actor training, and then they worked as a complete group on a flash mob show, thanks to the suggestion of Ornella who desperately wanted to share as much as possible of the gathering with the community.
Then the whole thing was again opened to the community with a final show of excerpts from the current work of each of the visiting companies, which was put on at the Espace Renaudie in a free performance for the public. All in all, the drawing together of more than 30 people from around the world with at one point five or six directors collaborating on a performance, was an exceptional example of how despite everyone having their own vision and ego, we can all work together when the goals are clearly defined and all leading to a show.
