The real strenght of the Teatro di Piazza o d’Occasione, founded in 1971 by Leonardo Toccafondi and then again in the 1979, is to create and use scenaries, images and materials always new and spectacular, developing lights, perceptive esthetic education, movement, colours, graphic signs and digital interactive technology.
This theatre is part of that Performing art that focus on the audience, making it fact. It makes a traditional scene a multimedial habitat and, leaving us free to move, it allows us to interact with the minimal elements that surrounds us. The audience has an important role, it is the audience that define the existence of the show itself. We are ready to follow and respond to every input, we are aware that we are into the rappresentation, and we can lose ourselves in these scene, where instinct and narration can take our fantasies, and that is the strength; changing, being part of a creative and ludic dimension.
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This idea started with Piero Giraldi, that 35 years ago with Macchine per discorrere used the interactive system, , like Studio Azzurro, Robert Cahen or Mario Canali. These interactive experience have a sensorial enjoyment. In fact, in the recent works of TPO the main aspects are the sensoriality, the surprise, and games, and the idea of fusion between artist and audience and body and space. These interactive works let us know our reactive effects, and surf like on the net to create new emotions and feelings.
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This work started in 2001, when TPO, directed by Francesco Gandi and Davide Venturini, abandoned the classical idea of narration and developed a experimentation about new digital languages associated to music, dance, poetry, cooperating with artists of every nationality. The elements of the visual, sounding, tactile language that are characteristic of the shows are now disintegrated and re-elaborated in scenaries opened to different contaminations. Using this approach, company created the concept of CCC (Children Cheering Carpet) interactive theatre.
This is an interactive space where actors and children can interact through a dancecarpet with 32 sensorial pressure points. With this high technological scenary, the company created a trilogy about garden. The Japanese garden, the painted garden (inspired by the Kurdish ones), the Italian garden. The CCC format let TPO realize original shows, appreciated by kids and adults all over the world.
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The painted garden is a garned created by painter Rebwar Saeed, in which colors and shapes of oriental gardens meet and follow each other. On stage two dancers invite the audience into a virtual space represented by a carpet on which are projected 4 interactiv ambients: yellow garden (land), blu garden (water), green garden (leaves), red garden (Love). The blue one is also the last one.
In this February the company is going to perform several times : the Japanese Garden at the Spleen Festival in Graz (Austria ) the 5 th and 6 th , the Painted Garden at the Biennale Festival in Venice the 23 rd and 24 th . From March the 6 th , there will be the Italian Garden at the Teatro Fabbrichino in Prato.
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In this show, children live a journey into colors and shapes. On stage two dancers dance into the different paintings, each one of these has a living game ambient. In this exploration, the dancers invite the audience on the garden/carpet, where stones, flowers, soil, water, animals suggest a physical and sensorial relation with space. In this high tech scenary, audience has to live easy and moment after moment a game action based on a tactile relationship with images and sounds. The gardens are an aesthetic experience and help children and adult developing a primary approach to theatre, movement and contact with art.
The Japanese Garden is a sort of novel. Lakes, stones, paths, lost steps, zen garden and other scenary followed a code artistic idea, focused on recreate artificially an ideal landscape. It’s made of five little sensitive garden, each one of these is an exploration, sometimes individual. Each one of this ambients develops a theatral action, based on the perceptive relation with natural elements. The gardens, made of images on a white carpet, suggest games, create a dynamic contact, communicate like a visual poem throught images and sounds in real time. There are no rules, times or correct ways of interpretation.
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CCC is a special place where is possibile to know some wonders of a Japanese garden. In the beginning, an actress tells a short story about the origin of the Japanese Garden , the invite the audience into the scenic space. The children sit around a big white carpet. On this interactive carpet a dancer open, step by step, five garden: water-lily garden, grass garden, singing bridge garden, flower garden and sea garden. The carpet has sensors activated by pressure of body. When the dancer ends his dance, he let the children in this ambient in silence. Children explore the space by themselves, looking for images, sounds and surprises. Moving, children create little dances, participating to an imaginary journey and living an amazing experience. .
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The italian garden will be the next show of the TPO. Created as a metaphor of the classical worls but also as a place of surprise, the Italian garden is a living art piece that from the Reinassance is changing shape. The aim of its beauty could be limited only to an aristocratic fun, but in the audience it shows wider projects, becoming an intellectual game.
Labirynth, statues, water games tell us stories that let generations of (rich) children imagine, that create their dreams in this natural and secret stage. Trhought theatre, today this exclusive scenary is open and its beauty are available in an interactive show, inspired by some historical garden in Tuscany : Villa Gamberaia, Villa Reale, Villa Schifanoia and others.