Nico Orengo

Take the Stage!

The fifty years have been years of inventiveness and commitment to the city, of creativity and clashes. From the post-war period up to more recent times, the city has been echoed by its theatre as it has recounted its tensions and achievements, its contradictions and unforgettable moments. The story, told from the viewpoint of an illustrious, enthusiastic, but wryly detached spectator, includes heroic protagonists and romantic illusions, wasted creativity and unforgettable events. And the story brings us right up to today, describing a city undergoing profound changes, progressing towards an open-ended future of art and culture. And the theatre, that old theatre of “gold and velvet”, is today both the driving force and the witness of the profound changes, from the industrial city to a new hotbed of cultural ideas for Europe. In the Olympic year, the Teatro Stabile di Torino reveals how, once again, the theatre and its plays are reflections of an entire society, able to bring a new and different light to the ongoing journey of humankind.

Fifty years of life in the theatre, fifty years of life in the city. Turin and its theatre echo one another and cast light on each other in this amusing and enthusiastic account from a wry and illustrious spectator, Nico Orengo. Since 1955 the Teatro Stabile di Torino – the Turin Resident Theatre – has been based in the historic Carignano and Gobetti Theatres with their rich gold and velvet decorations, as well as in «alternative» spaces in buildings originally designed for other purposes. And the Teatro Stabile has narrated, accompanied and at times foreseen changes and developments as well as tensions and clashes within society. The memories, ambitions, successes and illusions of all those who took to those stages and all those who sat in the stalls lead us into a trip down a recent memory lane. Pepe, Trionfo, Gregoretti, Enriquez, De Bosio, Ronconi, Le Moli, as well as Gassman, Pasolini, Vacis, De Berardinis, Castri, Missiroli, Lavia, Avogadro, Curino, Quartucci, Carmelo Bene, and many other famous names are the stars in this ongoing story which has, in the last five years, led to a true boom for Turin theatre. With a mix of research and tradition, new approaches and re-stagings of the classics, the theatre has continued to provide an insight into our world, revealing its hidden mechanisms, allowing us to see it in different and new lights. The profound changes that Turin has witnessed, from being an industrial city to becoming a mine of new cultural ideas for Europe, has seen the theatre out in the forefront. The city is inventing for itself a new future that makes the most of its past, its history and its traditions. And once again, the theatre manages to reveal precisely what is happening. In recent years, the Teatro Stabile has staked out its role as a cultural institution, promoting a wide-ranging re-thinking, at times a critical re-thinking of events. And in doing so, it has become a driving force for new energies, new professional skills, a place of memories and poetry. In a city that is changing its very raison d’être, the theatre has also become a driving force for change and for future ideas, as demonstrated by the multi-faceted Domani project, conceived by Walter Le Moli and Luca Ronconi for the Winter Olympic Games.