Direzione Artistica:
Massimo Betti Merlin e Lorena Senestro
TEATRO DELLA CADUTA
It was born in Turin in 2003 from an idea of Massimo Betti Merlin and Lorena Senestro who transformed an old neighbourhood workshop into a miniature theater.
Over the years it has hosted hundreds of artists: street performers, actors and musicians, becoming a sort of home for young artists designed to produce shows and theatrical activities in full artistic freedom. The TdC is recognized and supported by the Piedmont Region and the Ministry of Culture. Over the years it has produced numerous productions that privilege the centrality of the actor and range from new drama to street art, from musical projects to comedy shows. It has quickly become a point of reference for young actors and musicians precisely because it provides a springboard for professionalism, offering opportunities for earnings and promotion in major events and shows.
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The Concentrica project promotes collaboration between theatrical subjects at regional and national levels. It networks different subjects as host spaces and artistic co-direction, promoting a different logic of theatrical distribution, giving hosted companies the opportunity to do several consecutive dates in different places in Piedmont and Liguria. A theater review of performances but also a construction site with parallel projects: an observatory of and with young people, convivial moments and networking to activate the contemporary scene.
Created to make up for the lack of spaces in which to rehearse, it aimed from the beginning to bring new audiences of all ages to the theater. For this purpose, the traditional entrance fee was abandoned: admission costs 1 euro and the artists' compensation is guaranteed by “up to you” offerings. Among the most significant numbers, one concerns the audience, which is large and always new: more than 25,000 different spectators in 12 years (more than 45,000 attendances). The theater provides the technical staff and the theater's fully equipped rehearsal hall to debutants. With this formula, more than 40 shows have been born, of which 11 have become full-fledged productions, distributed with professional logic and some co-produced with cultural institutions of national importance - Torino Spirituality; Festival Mirabilia, Circolo dei Lettori, TST, Casa del Teatro Ragazzi e Giovani.
The experience of the Varietà della Caduta has allowed artists from different disciplines to meet and compare directly on stage. From the practice, therefore, an idea of theater has been established where the actor is at the center. The pouring of techniques and experiences between different languages act on the work of the company and the adaptation for the stage of literary texts and theater classics through original dramaturgical rewrites. Low-budget production becomes part of the company's poetics and manifests itself in the creation of sound and lighting sets according to a philosophy of empty space. Proximity to the audience in working in small and unconventional spaces, according to a site-specific practice; the use of practices and artists from very different backgrounds, toward the overcoming of genres and the rehabilitation of the comic in theater (often relegated to popular and separate circuits).
The ongoing activity of Teatro della Caduta is internationally recognized with an average of 13 different performance formations that circuit in theaters and festivals, in Italy and abroad. At the same time, it has generated at the regional level a recognizable path that, in addition to having a strong cultural impact, so much that the spaces managed by the association have been indicated in several tourist guides as places not to be missed (Torino Low Cost, Rizzoli; Lonely Planet, 111 places in Turin that you really must discover, Emons Edizioni).
Assets are made available, as well as the artistic and management skills gained in 15 years, the network of relationships built over time, as well as investing with own resources where it is deemed necessary to improve and implement the project; the circuiting of shows paid at a fixed cachet or percentage; fundraising through donations and "up to you" nights; MiC with the FUS grant; Piedmont Region with the contribution of Regional Law 11/2018 (ex 68 and 58); City of Turin with the TAP Torino Performing Arts call, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and the CRT Foundation for the Concentrica project. Among the activities carried out and implemented over the years of activity, the Concentrica - Performances in Orbit project, now in its twelfth edition in 2024, has allowed to consolidate the reality of Teatro della Caduta within a network of partners and contacts even outside the regional borders of Piedmont, spreading even more the expertise and reality of Teatro della Caduta, extending to Liguria and Valle d'Aosta.
Teatro della Caduta has been dedicated for several years to the promotion of emerging actors and the production, or co-production, of new shows. The support we provide to actors is then also reflected in our organizational management and the creation of our showcase of performances: in order to support artists, we encourage the re-programming of repertory titles, so that productions can be circulated in territories not yet explored. The network that the TdC has managed to establish over the years guarantees artists a chance to show their work in different contexts, with increased visibility thanks to cross-partner actions.
The relationships created over the years have enabled the birth and increasingly strong national positioning of Concentrica, an interregional festival with diverse forms and multiple audiences.
Currently Concentrica, now in its twelfth edition, finds reason to exist in triple form:
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Concentrica in giro: in Piedmont, Valle d'Aosta and Liguria, the festival offers both new titles presented in Turin and titles from the "repertory" of previous editions, in an "interregional season" integrated with the individual programming of partners. Concentrica's system favors the companies' journey, supporting the longevity of the repertoire rather than forcing on new titles at any cost: the partner operators see at each edition the shows during Concentrica's Turin showcase, choosing live those to be programmed the following year in their own seasons and generating a virtuous circle that allows artists to return several̀ times to the same territory even in subsequent seasons. In addition, the network of partners makes it possible to organize mini-tours of the same shows, optimizing resources and economies.
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Scampagnate teatrali: a rich and varied calendar in and around Turin, marked by multidisciplinarity and favoring non-strictly theatrical contexts and 360° collaborations with the territories involved. Not only a programming of live performances, but also an opportunity for the public to discover the hidden beauties and excellences of the territory. Theater becomes an excuse to create community and get out of the routine of one's cultural habits. At the same time, theater also finds new strength and stimulation by getting out of the designated spaces and going to inhabit places full of history and stories. At the project level, Scampagnate Teatrali are a means of activating new partnerships and networking with artistic, cultural, tourist and food and wine operators in the area
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Open School, a two-week festival that hosts the new edition's novelties, inhabiting historic school buildings in Turin and beyond in the unprecedented guise of theater spaces and activating the school̀ community (from students to professors to school workers) in the organization and production of the events. In addition to the specific activities related to the evenings of the performances, students participate in the preceding months in hands-on workshops included within the Transversal Skills and Orientation Pathways (PCTO in Italian) aimed at informing and bringing young people closer to those professions related to the performing arts sector that are often hidden "behind the scenes," letting them experience firsthand the stages of organizing a cultural event. The project is the result of work carried out by Teatro della Caduta with the support of various professionals from the artistic realities of Turin, but not only.
The project is the result of work carried out by Teatro della Caduta with the support of various professionals from artistic realities in Turin and beyond. These include To.o.l - Torino Open Lab (TdC's under-35 spin-off), Theatron 2.0 and Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo. Currently the project has involved just under 300 students from the following schools: IIS Avogadro, Liceo Berti, Convitto Nazionale Umberto I, Istituto Albe Steiner, IIS Bobbio (Carignano) and Liceo Porporato (Pinerolo). In addition, in 2022 it was recognized by ANPAL - Services as a good practice of PCTO/School-to-work alternation and included in the eighth edition of the Catalogue "The School that Enterprise." Finally, the project, with over 2,000 votes, is among the 40 finalists from all over Italy in the Art Bonus competition.
As of 2022, the Fall Theater has decided to focus its forces on two processes of growth and development of the facility, supported by winning the Next Generation You - second edition call promoted by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and with the support of Liv.in.g. The "TdC BEYOND BORDERS" project has two strands:
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path of growth and empowerment of the in-house work team, with a better allocation of delegations, procedural flows, and with the acquisition of new professionals with more targeted skills focused on certain topics. The new resources in particular have a focus on project management, international design, and contribute to the training of existing staff.
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internationalization process: the desire is to look more and more into the world of international and European planning, acquiring good practices and more knowledge of the cultural and educational sector from abroad. Initial memberships in networks such as IETM, participation in meetings and workshops dedicated to the theme of the international such as Laboratorio Farnesina, Wonderland Festival and C.Re.S.Co.'s international table meetings, and entry into platforms to support the search for international partners such as UP2Europe and Erasmus Toolkit have begun. In addition, TdC has just participated in the Culture for Solidarity Fund matchmaking event of the Just Transition call.
Finally, the CRT Foundation's click day SOS! Cybersecurity to protect the digital data of Third Sector entities. The TdC will avail of a free training course and a cybersecurity toolkit. These include: a Proactive Antivirus package to be installed on 3 mobile devices, an online platform for secure file sharing and editing, and the ability to store up to 20 GB of data per year on 100% GDPR compliant DataCenter.
