Laura Curino is one of the most dynamic and eloquent voices in narrative theatre. Following the extraordinary success of the diptych on the Olivetti family, she has embarked on a celebration of the ingenuity, the fantasy, the industry, and the enterprise of the Italians. Her curious and enchanted journey through Italian history, from the ‘six-legged dog’ of the Eni logo, to Italian design, up to the 150 years of the Polytechnic, now makes a call at the station of Fiera Milano (the Milan Exhibition Centre), presenting it in a show directed by Emiliano Bronzino, an apprentice of Ronconi, who returns to the Piccolo to direct this production after the success of his Uncle Vanya last season.
“The Piccolo Teatro di Milano is the perfect location to stage this project”, explains Emiliano Bronzino, “because it is tightly bound to the city and at the same time incredibly and necessarily international, universal.”
As Curino explains – “We will represent the City’s Fair in the City’s Theatre, and as the word ‘fiera suggests [in Italian the word ‘fiera’ means ‘fair’ but also ‘proud’ NT], it will be a celebration and a story to be proud of. A play is a secular ritual which presents a story and emotions to the audience. Without an audience there is no theatre, without Milan there is no Fair: we will travel Milan. I’d like to tell of courageous, unconventional and original people, to tell of people with strong backs, held strong even at the risk of seeming lofty. It isn’t haughtiness; it’s simply their attempt to see as high and as far as possible. I would like to tell of nobly proud ideas, which demonstrate farsightedness, a challenge for the future. I would like to choose the protagonists from the many visitors, exhibitors, organisers and even great architects and designers who have brought life to the areas of the Fair, the Italian companies whose products have become symbols of the transformation of society. How many machines, ideas, and objects have passed through the gates of the Fair to travel and to speak of us to the world? Faces and voices which make up the portrait of an industrious contemporaneity which does not bow to individualism, to the unhindered circulation of sadness, to virtuality seen as an absence of responsibility”.
“More than a Once upon a time... – concludes the writer – I want this to be a There will be a time, tomorrow”. The historical archive of the Fondazione Fiera Milano is rich with priceless documents; through the show the audience will be able to access that goldmine of stories and faces, of journeys, meanings, inventions and products that form part of history from the 1920s to today.