Teodorico’s Ravenna: a melting pot of inspiration for contemporary performing arts creation

For its 10th edition, taking place in May 2027, and as part of the programme of Culture Moves Europe, POLIS Teatro Festival launches an open call for performing artists from Creative Europe countries for an artistic residency dedicated to the figure of Teodorico, the Ostrogothic king who made Ravenna the capital of his kingdom, to celebrate also the 1500th anniversary of his death. 

Performing artists are invited in Ravenna to develop a research-based project inspired by Teodorico’s legacy and the political vision of his reign, often considered an early example of multicultural coexistence. Participants will have the opportunity to explore historical sites connected to his history and engage with the local context through research, interviews, and dialogue with scholars and experts from different fields.

POLIS will cover travel expenses, provide accommodation and per diems, working spaces (as exposed below), artistic mentoring and production support, with the aim of developing a new work to be presented within the programme of the festival, which will take place from May 4th to May 9th 2027.

• WHEN:
  The residency will have a duration of 28 days, from April 12th to May 9th 2027.
  
• WHERE:
  First 2 weeks: CreSco, a creative coworking space that brings together cultural professionals, artists and organizations working in the cultural and social sectors. This environment will provide a stimulating context for research, exchanges and meetings with local experts while developing the project concept.
  Final 2 weeks: Artificerie Almagià, a former industrial space now dedicated to performing arts, fully equipped, where residents will translate research into a new artistic creation to be shared during the final days of the festival.

Eligibility

• Applicants must be residing in eligible countries under the Creative Europe programme, excluding Italy;
• Applicants must be 18+ years old;
• Applications are accepted from already established performing arts groups or collectives of maximum 5 people;
• The call is open to artists working in performing arts (including hybrid and multidisciplinary practices), with a clear connection to contemporary theatre;
• As the residency is part of Culture Moves Europe Call for Residency Hosts, applicants are not eligible to participate as residents in another residency project funded under any Call for Residency Hosts running from 2025 to 2028;
• Applicants must be available for the whole period between April 12th and May 9th 2027.

Application Requirements

Applications must be submitted by July 31st 2026 exclusively through the following form https://forms.gle/z8FoMK95cb44Gjo49 and include:

• Proof of residence (ID card or official document confirming registration in the country of residence of all the applicants);
• CV in English of all the applicants;
• Artistic portfolio of the company/each applicant in English;
• First project proposal and residency work plan with work methodology (max 3000 characters including spaces).

Please note that, if selected and upon consent, the project title and summary may be published on the websites and social media channels of the European Commission, Culture Moves Europe, and project partners.

Image: Palazzo Imperiale (Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna) | Photo © Opera di Religione della Diocesi di Ravenna

Carullo-Minasi rediscover the story of Asja Lacis, “Krapp’s Last Post”, June 15 2026

https://www.klpteatro.it/carullo-minasi-asja-lacis-recensione

“It all began with an erasure… To erase, one need not destroy. Sometimes it is enough simply to cover up, says Minasi, “and this is what has been done with the life, work and legacy of Asja Lacis. The production, therefore, aims to reveal what was hidden, using a narrative approach that tells a story without being overly didactic, sharing experiences to foster empathy and curiosity. A narrative that, by alternating moments of storytelling, pause and performance on stage – thanks also to the exquisite musical and vocal counterpoint provided by musician Irida Gjergji – seeks to offer a portrait of a life, and at the same time of the work of the artist and the woman, mother, lover and muse.”

Agata Tomšič was elected to the new Board of ItaliaFestival during the association’s latest General Assembly, held on Sunday, May 24, 2026, at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan. This appointment marks a moment of significant value for our organization, which will now be able to represent the needs and interests of festivals and organizations like ours at a national level, while gaining valuable experience and building new relationships.

Founded in 1987 under the auspices of AGIS (the Italian General Association for the Performing Arts), ItaliaFestival now represents 50 national festivals and 5 festival networks spanning music, theater, dance, literature, and the performing arts.

The main purpose of the network is to promote festivals as tools for social cohesion and territorial development, fostering dialogue between businesses, supporting emerging realities, and serving as a spokesperson for the cultural sector’s needs in its dialogue with institutions.

Equally important is the role that ItaliaFestival plays on an international level: the association is, in fact, part of the EFA (European Festivals Association)—the most important festival network, based in Brussels, which encourages exchanges between member countries and the internationalization of culture and live performance—of which POLIS Teatro Festival became a member in 2026.

We are delighted to announce that POLIS Teatro Festival is now an official member of the EFA – European Festival Association, a prestigious international network bringing together around a hundred festivals and national organizations from forty countries across Europe.

EFA brings people and organisations together – to exchange, create, and act – whether sparked by a project, a context, or a pressing societal issue.

EFA currently includes around one hundred festivals and national coordination organizations from forty countries

Founded in 1952, in the aftermath of the Second World War, EFA aligned with the mission to rebuild Europe and the world through the arts.
EFA connects a wide range of stakeholders who embrace and advocate for various social, political, and economic dimensions and causes. EFA’s mission is to unite perspectives and connect festival makers in their efforts to support artists and society.

ErosAntEros – POLIS Theatre Festival will be presenting itself to members during the Arts Festival Summit 2026, 16–19 May, Budva, Montenegro, and was unanimously welcomed into the Association, alongside 17 other European festivals.

Between May 5th and 10th, the festival hosted thirty-five events, including performances and debates featuring the most prominent names from the Northern European theatre scene. The program included six national premieres and one preview, as well as opportunities for discussion and round tables between international artists, scholars, and professionals, confirming the festival’s commitment to high artistic quality.

Identity, censorship, female pleasure and the politics of the body, solitude, nostalgia, and community: these were the keywords that shone in the celestial vault of POLIS 2026.

Check out the photo gallery (Ph Dario Bonazza) and the video, realized by Les Bompart Produzioni.

Thu, April 30 2026

Tue, May 5 2026

Wed, May 6 2026

Thu, May 7 2026

Fri, May 8 2026

Sat, May 9 2026

Sun, May 10 2026

POLIS Theatre Festival 2026. A Nordic Focus for the ninth edition, “Krapp’s Last Post”, May 30 2026

https://www.klpteatro.it/polis-teatro-festival-2026-reportage

“Identity – whether to be sought or redefined – censorship, female pleasure and the political nature of the body, loneliness, nostalgia and community. The ninth edition of POLIS Theatre Festival, under the artistic direction of Davide Sacco and Agata Tomšič of ErosAntEros, centred on these themes – though not exclusively – and, as usual, offered a valuable opportunity for discussion through a diverse programme in early May.

[…] In the work of filmmaker and journalist Karolis Kaupinis (produced by Operomanija), nostalgia for the past is replaced by ironic interpretations of the sounds of the 1980s and 1990s, which set the pace and accompany the visual narrative: questions that are sometimes nonsensical, others asked repeatedly, sentimental interludes and fragments of history make up a rich collage that opens windows onto the evolving identity of a young, multifaceted country, leaving the viewer with a sense of curiosity and connection.

Yet another identity to be sought, constructed and reclaimed through fragments of life – real or imagined – in Je suisse (or not) by Camilla Parini of the Treppenwitz Collective, an intimate and intensely powerful performance for two spectators at a time. The artist, dressed in a polar bear costume – the very same figure, locked in a tender embrace with activist Greta Thunberg, which served as the festival’s symbolic image in Gianluca Costantini’s drawing – gently welcomes the audience and, together with them, explores the concepts of family, sense of belonging and memory […].

Tivoli, meanwhile, comes from Estonia and marks the national premiere of the latest creative project by the Estonian artist Siim Toniste, a performer and dancer, […] who places great value on collaboration and collective creation. This is precisely the kind of experience the audience in Ravenna were invited to take part in, sharing with Toniste a time of play, discovery and the exchange of experiences within the spaces of the MAR […].

The voice—subtle, intense, harsh—opens up to a multitude of inflections, in a play of whispers and shouts, at the heart of Materiale per Medea by Agata Tomšič. The actress, author and director—one of the two driving forces behind ErosAntEros—continues her exploration of voice and sound by working with a challenging, vivid, radical text by Heiner Müller, and, together with the Slovenian composer and sound designer Matevz Kolenc, constructs a physical-vocal score that offers no respite, screaming out a condemnation of marginalisation, exclusion and betrayal […].

Gathered around a lavishly laid table, before tucking into some delicious cappelletti with meat sauce prepared by volunteers from the Teatro Socjale, the stage was set for the performance Asja Lacis, the woman who brings history to life, […] written and directed by Cristiana Minasi, who shares the stage with Irida Gjergji.

A few words about Ulla by Finnish playwright Eeva Turunen, directed by Eugenio Sideri and Alice Giroldini of MaMiMò, in collaboration with PAV / Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe, is an intense monologue that explores loneliness and the inability to face reality. […] Beneath the minutiae of daily life, amidst real or imagined phone calls and phobias that eventually turn into obsessions, we are confronted with the human desire for love and affection that animates every existence.

With its cinematic flair, Something Real—a play by the Estonian playwright Martin Algus, staged by Studio Doiz—is brought to life by the dynamic and engaging performances of the talented Lorenzo Carpinelli and Alessandro Renda, directed by Iacopo Gardelli, in collaboration with the Estonian Theatre Agency: a story that brings together two seemingly opposite lives which, whilst finding points of contact between them, both end up disintegrating under the blows of a life on the margins […]”.

A peep-show perspective: we’re all in the midst of a catastrophe, “il manifesto”, May 29 2026

https://ilmanifesto.it/prospettiva-peep-show-siamo-tutti-nella-catastrofe

The text requires the naturalism of the scene, says the author’s final note. Desolate Shore can be performed during the programme of a peep-show, Medea Material on a lakeshore near Strausberg, which could be a muddy swimming pool in Beverly Hills or the toilets of a psychiatric clinic, Heiner Müller suggests. It might seem like the German writer’s ultimate mockery of the actor’s art, forced to grapple with a text that appears at times impenetrable. Instead, it is rather an indication of method, a strong demand on the performer to place themselves at the same extreme height as the words. Where classical reminiscences intertwine with cruel glimpses into twentieth-century history, German history first and foremost, which immediately explodes in the image of deserters hanged from lampposts, with their tongues hanging out and a sign on their bellies. It is an indication that Agata Tomšič has taken very seriously in tackling, as performer and director, Medea Material, the summary title under which the triptych dedicated to the myth of Medea is collected here—a desperate invective, a ruthless indictment against the man who left her, a painful evocation of the story she is forced to relive. Without excluding the prologue and the epilogue, which also constitute its most hermetic, apocalyptic, and visionary parts (we saw it at the Teatro Rasi as part of POLIS Teatro Festival, dedicated this year by ErosAntEros to Northern European theatre). Of the first staging directed by Manfred Karge and Mathias Langhoff, seen some forty years ago, what remains in the spectator’s memory is the looming fuselage with a large propeller against the backdrop of a desolate landscape of tin cans, where a furious and powerful Kirsten Dene roared her betrayed love. But in more recent years, what is unforgettable above all is the final image of Valerie Dreville, the protagonist of Anatoly Vasiliev’s show, who repeated the last line as if in a trance, while at her feet the flames devouring her dress died down. A naked, wounded body, by then emptied of the energy that had sustained her until that moment.

Here we are instead, gathered in a circle around a small square platform that anticipates the image evoked by the author, while the actress is still walking around us. The peep-show where, bit by bit, the veils are destined to fall, which in the meantime let the protagonist’s body flash like bolts of desire. Covered by an arabesque cloak open along the sides that seems to allude also to a stole, a sacred vestment, her legs wrapped in tall, shiny black boots. Black and gold, which are not by chance the colours of theatre, understood as both a physical and metaphorical place. Day and night, light and darkness. Here it is darkness that prevails, allowing the sound volume of the performance to take over. The word is born from a breath that solidifies. And yet, meanwhile, the gaze shifts to the upper part of the actress’s face, decorated with a coloured mark that spreads almost like a ritual mask. Medea the barbarian, the foreigner, mother and murderer, the sorceress come from the shores of the Black Sea to bring disorder.

The East that still frightens those who dream of walls and not bridges today. In Heiner Müller’s perspective, the peep-show is the place where the spectator’s gaze can settle comfortably to contemplate the catastrophes surrounding them. We are all in it, one is tempted to say. If Müller read in the myth an ultimate model of colonialism, where the theme of betrayal emerged brutally in its juxtaposition with Medea’s gesture, today reality has become more blurred. Legible, as it is, from many different angles. This is attested by the reversal that occurs in the final part of the show, Landscape with Argonauts, where the spectators shift from being onlookers to inexorably being looked at. Forced, that is, to look at each other, in turn. A beam of light extends diametrically from that central focus and begins to rotate, illuminating the faces of the audience like a lighthouse. The rest is poetry, says the speaking I.

With a slight shift from Saverio Vertone’s translation, which is perhaps a lingering jolt of hope.

A Few Words About Ulla by Eeva Turunen, the world from a window, “Pagina Tre”, May 23 2026

https://paginatre.it/due-parole-su-ulla-di-eeva-turunen-il-mondo-vissuto-dalla-finestra/

“[…] It seemed to me like a sort of stream of consciousness: a lonely girl, probably bipolar, who looks out at the outside world from her apartment window, reflecting it onto herself through the imaginary creation of dialogues and situations. In particular, Ulla lives in the flat opposite, a girl with whom the protagonist, Allu, is in love. The line between fantasy, imagination, and reality becomes blurred: you live in a constant state of disorientation between past and present, between invented and real situations. A text full of loneliness, but also fraught with situations that have comic overtones. The tragedy of loneliness is eroded by the recounting of situations worthy of silent movie comedy. The gap I found between this proposal and my usual work intrigued me. I accepted it as a wager with myself, to challenge myself with a style of writing very far from my own.

I was looking for a stalemate situation, where everything happened at the window, without too much action. And then the wonderful Anna Magnani in A Human Voice, from Roberto Rossellini’s film L’Amore, came to mind. The episode, based on the play by Jean Cocteau, features the protagonist alone in her room, on the bed, talking on the phone. I needed a talented actress, capable of striking different performative chords, capable of evoking worlds and emotions even where the text seemed to hide them. This is how the collaboration with Alice Giroldini [tag] and our Ulla was born: a production with the protagonist in bed, from where she drives everything; from the bed, Ulla sees and narrates the outside world, which she glimpses from an imaginary window. From the bed, the protagonist performs the text, transforming the staged reading into a sort of acted production with the script pages in hand, which gradually scatter across the bed itself”.

POLIS Teatro Festival 2026, “Dramma.it”, May 19 maggio 2026

https://www.dramma.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=41199:polis-teatro-festival-2026&catid=40&Itemid=12

“NORDIC FOCUS is the ‘epigraph’ title of this ninth edition of the Festival conceived and generated by ErosAntEros—the Ravenna-based company of Agata Tomšič and Davide Sacco, which has always made, and once again makes, contradiction its ordinary nature. It is a fertile contradiction between aesthetic forms and languages that, in theatrical and dramaturgical practice, exalt rather than sever the thousand threads binding the stage to Community and History, seeking to intercept the thousand diverse forms of human creativity without rigidifying them.

A continuous and stubborn crossing of borders—be they external, geographical, and cultural, or the often far more rigid internal and psychological ones—in search of what composes, and thereby values and connects in a shared feeling, the diversity of ‘diversities’. This begins with gender, to recreate the stable/fluidity of sexuality as a search for a pleasure that is not erotic solipsism; it moves from the concept of ethnicity and nation, confronting itself through what oppresses it (and what oppresses it is not always ‘outside’); and it arrives at an idea of a ‘rainbow’ humanity that is both guest to and host of Nature.

Significant, in this regard, is the image of Greta Thunberg ’embraced’ by the Polar Bear, which also visually depicts the spirit of this edition of a festival that took place in various venues across beautiful Ravenna from May 5th to 10th.

Finally, a ‘trespassing’ that tends to compose an aesthetic and, at the same time, a geography of heresy—not only theatrical, as evidenced by the panel discussion that concluded the final day of the festival with the presentation of Marco De Marinis’s book, Regia Eretica (Heretical Directing).

This year in particular, as I was saying, in which POLIS delves into the climatically cold North-East of Europe, among Scandinavians, Baltics, and Finns (an apparent homogeneity made also of profound diversities) to ignite a ‘focus’ that illuminates and warms what is born and lives around that theatre.”

POLIS Teatro Festival, a showcase between the Baltic and Scandinavia, “Sipario”, May 18 2026

https://sipario.it/attualita/i-fatti/item/17599-polis-teatro-festival-una-vetrina-fra-baltico-e-scandinavia-di-nicola-arrigoni.html

“Between cities and cities / beyond the wall, the abyss / wind at my back, a hand / a stranger’s hand upon my solitary flesh / I still feel the angel / but he has no other face now / than yours, which I do not know. So writes Heiner Müller in *The Angel Without Fortune 2*, from the collection *The Invention of Silence: Poems and Texts from After 1989* (Ubulibri, 1995).

Why start with Müller? Not only because ErosAntEros, as part of the Polis Teatro Festival, staged the German author’s *Materials for Medea*, transformed into a melologue for voice and body by a captivating Agata Tomšič, but above all because the thought of Walter Benjamin and his *Angelus Novus* — that angel of history who, driven by the wind of progress, turns his back on the future to observe the rubble left in his wake — weave together the geopolitical and aesthetic reflection of the festival’s ninth edition. Theme: Nordic Focus, a monograph on the dramaturgy of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries.

Greta Thunberg and a bear appear in the illustration that serves as the festival poster, created by Gianluca Costantini. And that bear evokes Je suisse (or not) by Collettivo Treppenwitz, a performance for two spectators at a time, in which Camilla Parini, wearing a polar bear costume and with the help of a photo album, flips through memories and concepts of family, identity, and memory together with the audience. What emerges is the feeling of always being a stranger, of not belonging, a sense of disorientation and loss of certain horizons that not even family photographs can soothe.

And while the actress in the bear costume seeks herself and narrates a condition of existential and identity-based neutrality, Müller’s Medea is the stranger—she is the one who sacrificed everything for her man and finds herself abandoned, an outsider in the world she chose and no longer part of the world that gave her birth and nurtured her. It is the condition of the migrant, of peoples without a homeland. The actress, supported by the music of Matevž Kolenc, constructs a physical-vocal score that offers no respite, screaming out the condemnation of marginalization, exclusion, and betrayal. Agata Tomšič transforms all of this into a fierce song, a glimpse into a distant and magical East, golden and mysterious, that hovers over the abyss […]”.

Male Desire and Addiction: Martin Algus’s Play hits the stage, “Pagina Tre”, May 17 2026

https://paginatre.it/desiderio-maschile-e-dipendenze-in-scena-il-testo-di-martin-algus/

“Something Real is the debut novel, published in 2018 by the Estonian actor, playwright, and screenwriter Martin Algus, on the theme of loneliness and people’s ever-growing dependence on virtual reality, brought to the stage as a mise en espace by the Ravenna-based company Studio Doiz as part of the latest edition of POLIS Teatro Festival, at the Rasi Theatre in Ravenna.

A noir thriller that opens on the condition of existential and relational dissatisfaction of two diametrically opposed men, who alternate on stage with their unsettling monologues. The first (played by Alessandro Renda), a failed architect, loving father, wife no longer attractive, who starts to take refuge in erotic websites out of boredom, within a short time finds himself entangled in an out-of-control addiction to pornography and acts of masturbation in the workplace that cost him his dismissal.

The other (played by Lorenzo Carpinelli), is a man recently released from prison who begins a relationship with an alcoholic woman and a pre-teen daughter whom he has no qualms about using as bait on a website to attract pedophile clients, trap them with compromising photos and enrich himself.

[…] The gripping plot, told by two voices on stage, without any filter, toned down only at times by irony, is directed by Jacopo Gardelli with skill in making the two characters mirrors of each other. As he explained at the press conference presenting the Festival in recent days “the text speaks in a non-rhetorical way about male sexual desire, but in Algus’s text, who is one of the most appreciated playwrights in Estonia, as in many authors coming from ex-Soviet countries, one feels above all the theme of the loss of identity. Both characters are in fact looking for something real, they are two solitudes talking to each other”.

POLIS Festival 2026. Why doesn’t Romagna border the Baltic Sea?, “Quante scene!”, May 15 2026

“[…] Baltic, that is to say Nordic, defined by the borders of Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland, was the theme of the Polis Festival 2026, an event that ErosAntEros has been organising for the past nine years in what was once known as Romagna Felix.

These are not exactly happy times. Yet Agata Tomšič and Davide Sacco, the artistic directors and the two halves of ErosAntEros, are working hard to bring a focus on the international contemporary scene to Ravenna as well. Indeed, they are determined to set their compass in a different direction each year.

So, following on from the Iberian Peninsula in the last edition, they have chosen the frigid north for 2026. Artistically speaking, it isn’t quite that cold. It’s just a shame that here in Italy we know so little about it – very little indeed – limiting ourselves to those three or four names we’ve inherited from the 20th century: Nekrošius, Tuminas, Koršunovas, the divisive Hermanis…

All in all, my three days at POLIS Festival 2026 were a refreshing Nordic dip. They were balanced by the poignant Adriatic beauty of Ravenna and its mosaics, Byzantine and otherwise.

Which even managed to find their way into my breakfasts. The surprise of finding, first thing in the morning, mosaic tiles shaped like cookies, had something prophetic about it.

For when, in the future drift of the continents, the Baltic Sea will overlook Ravenna”.

Passaggio a Nord Est, part of the newsletter “Post Teatro – La Repubblica”, May 15 2026

“Festivals come in many forms: trendy or activist, or designed to bring a city to life. But there are other, smaller, and rarer ones that are, in a way, a direct extension of the artists who organize them—artists with strong convictions who gather friends and connections from all over the world around them. This is the case with Polis, the festival that since 2018 ErosAntEros—that is, Davide Sacco and Agata Tomsic—have been organizing in Ravenna with dedication and generosity, believing in it to the point that, in addition to conceiving the festival, they oversee the organization, look after the guest artists and guests in general with a level of attention and care rarely seen elsewhere, and often take the stage themselves. In short, at Polis there is an atmosphere of attachment and commitment that is contagious even to the audience, and it is a pleasure to witness.
The program of performances, in addition to Italian independent theater artists, focuses each year on a specific foreign context, without any particular cause to champion […]”.

Silvia Napoli, Facebook, May 15 2026

“Actually, I haven’t even finished updating you on last weekend, and we are already into the new one. Time moves fast; festivals and panel discussions overlap. POLIS is always a beautiful name for a festival, especially for a classicist in disguise like me. So, here we are in Ravenna, wrapped in the truly heartwarming hospitality of ErosAntEros. There is no better word to define the staff supporting this edition.

This time, the focus was on Northern European countries, including the Baltic region. There is a massive female presence at all levels within the theatrical and cultural ranks of these countries. Yet, the outcomes of one particular panel were surprising: we listened to a Swedish representative assert that—as any history textbook would confirm—the golden age for women’s rights was the 1970s, during the glorious post-war boom. The era of universal welfare, to be clear. And perhaps there is nothing to be surprised about, given the increasingly evident links between security policies, social welfare, and cultural practices; in the middle, acting as both a bonding agent and a cross-cutting wound, lies the condition of gender. On this note, when asked directly, it turns out that no, there are no advocacy associations among these seven countries quite like our own Amleta—an organization fully committed to demanding greater visibility for women while standing as a bastion against abuses perpetrated against human dignity as a whole. Intellectual commitment and spectacular performance alternate throughout the festival within a truly beautiful sense of community. It is difficult to recount everything about the festival, given that my ‘everything’ is inevitably limited and partial. There are so many moments, so many flashes amidst chatter, exhaustion, visions, rediscovered people, and lost umbrellas that leave their mark gently. Or with barbaric fierceness. We hang suspended between Camilla Parini’s poignant, personal memories of uprooting that strive to become collective, and the alienation of gender, civilization, and posture in Tomšič’s Medea, based on Müller, which redefines the use of the body and nudity on stage—much like we had previously observed with Gallerano.But when writing about POLIS, one cannot leave out, above all, the matinées that later turn into Romagnolo lunches at the Teatro Socjale in Piangipane. A feast for the eyes, the heart, and the palate, sitting at the table with friends from what might be a bubble, but with whom it is so wonderful to exchange impressions and reviews. The story on stage this time is performed by Minasi company—so, thoroughly Italian—but the Baltic region does indeed play a part through the protagonists of the story. As do the cold and the misery of a brazen Bolshevik youth. If you are not familiar with it (though here in the Facebook courtyard some friends have mentioned it), I highly recommend reading up on a story of rare intellectual and emotional intimacy. This is one, but not the only, theme of the lecture-performance centered on the figure of Asja Lacis. Embedded within history with a capital H, and the challenge of rendering it theatrically, lies this affaire between the protagonist and one of the giants of twentieth-century thought (and beyond): Walter Benjamin. The end is tragic and well-known; only five years after the events, Asja would learn from Bertolt Brecht about the self-inflicted death, via 31 morphine pills, of the legendary author of Berlin Childhood  and so much more.

The show is an absolute preview and will need some refining, but it reaffirms—through Politics, Love, and Knowledge, categories so absolute they almost inspire fear—that theatrical practice is truly a sort of transformative leaven capable of shaping relationships, as it did in that famous case. Private only up to a certain point, given the heavy public and political exposure of the subjects involved and of their theatre. I believe we will need to talk about it much more, because these complex times require unprecedented alliances across many different disciplines”.

Tomšič, Kaupinis and Minasi at Polis Teatro Festival, Ravenna, “PAC”, May 15 2026

https://www.paneacquaculture.net/2026/05/15/tomsic-kaupinis-e-minasi-al-polis-teatro-festival-di-ravenna

[…] “As vengeful as an Eastern sovereign, Agata Tomšič weaves her spell-like vocalisations and her grim anathemas with obsessive rhythm, whilst stifling any interpretative intention that might be moving or captivating: a cold and furious nursery rhyme, a sequence of grim verses, knife-like stabs that elongate the final vowel of every word into a note of hatred, into a blasphemy of pain and rage. In her workshop, in her alchemist’s study, the Slovenian artist has recreated a Heiner Müller steeped in murky undertones, demonic vocal experimentation, dark sexual obsessions, and dramatic conflicts from magical, archaic and ultra-modern eras.

[…]

This ninth edition of the Festival is entitled ‘Nordic Focus’ and focuses on theatre and the performing arts from the Baltic countries. At the Artificierie Almagià, Radvila Darius, son of Vytautas by Karolis Kaupinis, a Lithuanian film director and television journalist, conveys a subtle sense of unease. The most apt title for this collection of vintage television footage, filmed during the transition from Soviet Lithuania to its new embrace of the capitalist West, might in fact be The Unease of Lithuania.

[…]

Rather than a work of fiction, Cristiana Minasi’s piece is a biographical account with a strong educational and didactic focus, intended primarily for an audience of learners rather than spectators. This is not meant to be a limiting judgement, but rather a description that better captures the spirit of popularisation and guidance that characterises it”.

POLIS Teatro Festival: The Brave and Youthful Scene of the Baltic and Scandinavian Countries, “Theatron 2.0”, May 14 2026

https://webzine.theatronduepuntozero.it/polis-teatro-festival-la-scena-giovane-e-coraggiosa-dei-paesi-baltici-e-scandinavi/

The focus this year is on the Baltic and Scandinavian countries. What can you tell us about the protagonists and the selection criteria?

Agata Tomšič: This year, Davide and I worked just as we did in previous years, leveraging the international relationships we have built over time, both as artists and as artistic directors. This research doesn’t just come from visiting these countries, their festivals, foundations, and institutions that promote the circulation of their local artists—a feature that is very prominent in Northern Europe and guarantees these artists international visibility.

What I mean is that there are public or private institutions that invite festival directors, like the two of us, to visit their countries and get to know their artists. This way, you have the opportunity to connect with many artists in just a few days. They also offer a reimbursement of expenses, if not total, at least partial, just as they do when their artists come to our country. These are concrete opportunities that do not exist in our country, or exist only to a very small extent. This financial support not only provides visibility for the artist outside national borders but also offers the opportunity to “take risks” in terms of aesthetics and experimentation.

That being said, regarding the selection criteria, Davide and I investigated firsthand by traveling to Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. We also went to Finland, while for the other countries, we relied on consultations with professionals we met in international contexts. It wasn’t possible to bring every reality we encountered to the stage—sometimes for financial reasons, other times due to scheduling conflicts—but what we discovered is an extremely rich, brave, young scene that is highly focused on female creation, not only in terms of authorship but also curation. The artistic directors and dramaturgical consultants of the festivals we visited are mostly women between 35 and 45 years old, with remarkable energy and a radical approach that struck me deeply, and with whom I found myself very much in tune.

On Multiplicity. A (Double) Gaze at Supernova and Polis Teatro Festival, “Gagarin,” May 13, 2026

https://www.gagarin-magazine.it/2026/05/visto-da-noi/o-della-molteplicita-un-doppio-sguardo-su-supernova-e-polis-teatro-festival/

“[…] Western cultural history is well acquainted with this tension. From Ramon Llull, who in the 13th century envisioned his combinatory machines as tools for generating thought through the rotation of elements, to Leibniz’s Ars Combinatoria, European knowledge has repeatedly fantasized about the possibility that meaning arises not from unity, but from arrangement. In his Mnemosyne Atlas, Aby Warburg created a dialogue between images through proximity, friction, and secret echoes; there was no hierarchy, only montage. Similarly, in the 20th century, the Avant-gardes — from Surrealism to post-dramatic theatre — progressively replaced the closed work with constellations of fragments.”

A contemporary festival, when truly successful, works precisely within this tradition: it does not program events, but rather constructs perceptual relationships.

Both Supernova and POLIS Teatro Festival seem to have operated within this tension. This is evident not only in the plurality of languages summoned but in the way these were made to coexist within a single experiential duration. Audiences traversed spaces, listened to different languages, and continually adjusted their sensory disposition. The festival day thus became a practice of internal montage: those present had to become archivists of their own impressions […]”.

POLIS 2026: In Ravenna, POLIS discusses female pleasure through documentation and performance, “PAC,” May 10 2026

https://www.paneacquaculture.net/2026/05/10/a-ravenna-polis-parla-di-piacere-femminile-fra-documentazione-e-performance/

“[…] Among the most eagerly awaited events, on 6 May we have the opportunity to attend a performance-lecture at the Teatro Rasi, brought to us from Lithuania by the young director Laura Kutkaitė. The show is entitled tremolo, which in music refers to the rapid, obsessive repetition of a sound, an interval or a chord. What is tremolo about? Pleasure.

Exactly that – erotic pleasure – and here, expressed through a female lens. Joining Kutkaitė on stage is Kristina Morta, and together they seek to transform that word into vibration: pleasure, certainly, but also fear. The fear of not living up to the expectations that society has hammered into us like nails. The fear of not conforming to norms that we often did not choose but have learnt to repeat until they have become the soundtrack to our intimacy.

[…]

In collaboration with POLIS Festival, a discussion was organised between audience members, artists and the author Giulia Blasi, in partnership with the Casa delle Donne in Ravenna. The idea is that tremolo is not a lecture delivered by those who know to those who do not, but rather the start of a conversation. Its aim, in fact – stated openly, almost naively in its clarity – is to help everyone feel normal and healthy in their sex lives. Put like that, it sounds trivial. Yet it is one of the most radical things one could ask of theatre today. Because normality is never a given, never taken for granted, never the same for everyone. It is a daily achievement, made up of questions we have never dared to ask and answers we didn’t even know we had within us. The repeat performance with schools, where anonymity was guaranteed and the young audience could ask questions in confidence, saw this part of the show last an incredible hour. The questions were endless; young women and men wanted to know, to understand, to share. A flood of questions on everything that was being discussed, the tangible expression of those fears and anxieties that perhaps never truly fade, but which every generation must understand and confront anew, because they are never considered resolved once and for all.

Within this dual artistic framework, Sacco and Tomšič emphasise the significance of presenting tremolo, a piece they both chose to bring to the community. At a festival entitled POLIS, staging a performance like this means bringing back into the public discourse what has for too long remained confined to the private sphere, to the secrecy of the bedroom or the silence of medical consultations. Female pleasure is not an optional extra, it is not a frivolous topic, it is not something to be ashamed of. It is a matter of health. Of freedom. Of democracy. And if a ‘gentle strength’ is needed to tackle it, then so be it. Because kindness, as we know, is often the highest form of courage”.

Medea against patriarchy: a violent revolution, “Corriere di Romagna”, May 8 2026

“Müller’s text is not just a reflection on women and the female figure: her violent rebellion against a patriarchal system is one of the most violent revolutions. Medea kills her own children to change the system she lives in, to deny her role as a wife and mother—a woman who steps aside when her husband no longer desires her or no longer uses her for his own political purposes, because Jason does that too. We are talking about a Greek hero, an exporter of democracy, who occupies a barbarian territory and appropriates the Golden Fleece, using the king’s daughter for his own colonizing purposes. And when the king’s daughter becomes an exile with him in another land, and is also the mother of his children, but no longer serves his political purposes, he sees fit to ask for the hand of the daughter of the king of the realm they have moved to, thus making his social climb. Using another woman for his own purposes, as if she were an object. One can understand from this alone the power that this text also holds over our present. This was already written in the ancient myth, but Heiner Müller has the ability to emphasize it to the nth degree, writing a triptych where the third monologue is no longer in the first person by Medea, but is written in a collective first-person plural, where I and the audience are equally victims and perpetrators of the world we have plundered, colonized, capitalized on, and of the catastrophe resulting from these actions of ours, in the face of which we are no longer able to react.”

Interview with ErosAntEros, curated by Sergio Lo Gatto on Rai Radio 3, as part of the program Teatri in prova, April 27, 2026, featuring contributions from Laura Kutkaite and Carullo-Minasi, along with a preview excerpt of Tracking Satyrs into Morse by Demetrio Castellucci.

Listen to the PODCAST here.