Short Theatre 2022, contemporary and performing arts festival in Rome

Short Theatre 2022: ¡Vibrant Matter!

Rome’s annual Short Theatre, the international festival dedicated to contemporary and performing arts, returns for its seventeenth edition this September with a series of evocative performances including concerts, Dj sets, dance and theatre performances, workshops, and installations, presented by artists coming together from all over the world. Wider than any previous editions, the event will be spread out throughout the city in different venues including places like WEGIL, Mattatoio di Roma, Teatro Argentina, Teatro India, the Royal Spanish Academy, Villa Medici and other urban spaces where Romans and visitors enjoy their cultural life.

The title of this year’s edition, ¡Vibrant Matter!, is an invite to search for that vital and ever-changing corporeality that traverses and binds human and non-human forms, shifting the focus from our experience of material items to objects themselves, to materials as artificial components or cultural constructions. This is the main theme of Short Theatre 2022, the outcome of cultural and artistic investigation and experimentation through different means and creative processes.

The events will take place in 13 different locations within the urban territory of Rome, but also, for the first time, the festival will include other cities such as Velletri and Pontinia in Lazio, thanks to a new collaboration with the regional theatre association.

The festival is cured by internationally acclaimed dramaturge Piersandra di Matteo who chooses to focus on the proximity of artistic paths, the interweaving and exchange with political and social processes, in a vast network of urban collaborations and international synergies.

MATTATOIO
September 6th – 11th

The first week of the festival will mainly unfold at the Mattatoio before moving to several locations around the city in the second week. The opening of the festival will be entrusted to the inauguration of the photographic installation 40 Portraits (2003-2008) by Gisèle Vienne, in Pavilion 9b at the Mattatoio. The innovative and surreal work of the Franco-Austrian choreographer, director, puppeteer and visual artist can also be visited for the entire duration of the festival and it will be accompanied by the poetic and enchanting electronics of musician Eva Geist.

Among the new lines inaugurated by Short Theatre 2022 is PRISMA, an expanded project dedicated to Gisèle Vienne that involves different venues and partners, offering to the city the transdisciplinary work of an international artist capable of nourishing the all spectrum of the performative process. PRISMA identifies the points of intersection between research, linguistic contexts in direct contact with aesthetic and political imagination, connected to hold together different souls of the city.

Once again, RECIPROCITY, a section that brings together participatory projects, workshops, shared practices, workshop-based performances, returns to the festival. This section looks in particular at the question between talent and ability and discusses the topic of inclusivity in the performing arts, both from the point of view of the audience and of the artists in the programme, in dialogue with the Al.Di.Qua.Artists collective and associations, cultural operators and social bodies. Performances, dances and theatrical pièces will alternate on the stage, maintaining the focus on the themes of gender equality, feminism, sustainability, and the south of the world, not forgetting to include artists and performers from Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

WEGIL – TEATRO INDIA (and other locations)
September 12th – 18th

The second part of Short Theatre will spread around the city in multiple locations with performances and shows exploring the body as an (in)natural assemblage of experiences, energies, fluids and atoms. Cultural constructions crosses the programme of Short Theatre 2022, as in the case of Manifesto Transpofágico, which the Brazilian actress and director Renata Carvalho presents in its national premiere to tell the story of a travesti. The collaboration between Short Theatre and the Master in Gender Studies and Policies of Roma Tre is realised in the space of WEGIL with various appointments, including three free lectures by Jack Halberstam, author and lecturer in Gender Studies at Columbia University.

At Short Theatre, the body seen as an area of imaginative and transformative possibilities finds the opportunity to become an animal or fantastic entity, creating new political mythologies. This happens in Crangon Crangon, the first authorial work by the performer Daria Greco; or in Seeking Unicorns, a specific version for WEGIL of Gentle Unicorn by Chiara Bersani who, affirming the inherently political nature of her own body, proclaims herself the flesh and blood of the Unicorn, a creature that has no country nor history.

The festival involves artists from multiple sectors and backgrounds: internationally acclaimed DJs find their place in this festival, culminating in the techno rhythms of the Chilean Valesuchi, in the vibrations of the Afro-Berlin collective African Acid Is The Future with the Venezuelan singer and DJ Aérea Negrot, in the cross-media practice of the Cuban-Belgian Làzara Rosell Albear, and in the temporary occupation of space and time at MERENDE, curated by Industria Indipendente.

Not only music and theatre performances, but this edition of the festival will also see the new Short Books publishing production launched in collaboration with NERO Editions, with the aim of addressing the intertwining of theory, aesthetics, critical thinking, cultural studies and performance practices.

For more details on Short Theatre’s list of artists and performers and what is unfolding when, check their website or click here.

ARTISTS:

September 6 – 18

Locations in Rome:

La Pelanda – Mattatoio di Roma, Piazza Orazio Giustiniani 4
WEGIL, Largo Ascianghi 5
Teatro Argentina, Largo di Torre Argentina, 52
Teatro India, Lungotevere Vittorio Gassman, 1
Teatro Vascello, Via Giacinto Carini, 78
Teatro Biblioteca Quarticciolo, Via Castellaneta, 10
Cinema Troisi, Via Girolamo Induno, 1
Carrozzerie n.o.t,Via Panfilo Castaldi, 28
Teatro Palladium,Piazza Bartolomeo Romano, 8
Villa Medici, Viale della Trinità dei Monti, 1
Real Academia de España, Piazza di S. Pietro in Montorio, 3
Circolo Angelo Mai, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 55
Parco Giordano Sangalli, Viale dell’Acquedotto Alessandrino