Museums in Lombardy open up to narrative theater. Among the protagonists, Pennacchi and Celestini

From August 24 to September 10, 2023, the second edition of Voci Umane. Musei e Teatro di Narrazione (Museums and Storytelling Theater ), a narrative theater festival promoted by the regional directorate Musei Lombardia at the behest of director Emanuela Daffra.

The last edition, the first, was a success in each of the seven museum venues involved. The choice of shows is meant to combine with the places, which in turn are linked to the shows while not being “told” by them.

Protagonists of this second edition will be Andrea Pennacchi, Federica Molteni, Marta Cuscunà, Paola Roscioli, Ascanio Celestini, Arianna Scommegna, and Lella Costa. “The protagonists of the seven evenings have been chosen not only because they are great storytellers and narrators, but because of the depth of their gaze that will lead us on legendary paths or into real stories that still touch everyone,” Emanuela Daffra stressed. “Each visitor/spectator, in his or her own way, will be able to recognize themselves in this storytelling and take home a deeper and more vivid memory of these places of beauty that are also extraordinary Aladdin’s lamps. Taken in hand, rubbed, they trigger thoughts, discussions, emotions that are not to be forgotten.”

It begins on August 24 in Valle Camonica, at the National Park of Rock Engravings (Nquane), with Andrea Pennacchi “accompanying” the audience From Here to the Moon, the path that the sixteen million trees uprooted by the October 2018 storm Vaia, if placed one after the other, would make possible. A choral tale intended to bring to life, without any rhetoric, the horror of those days through the eyes of the inhabitants of the Belluno valleys.

On Friday, August 25, in the archaeological area of Porta Castello at the National Archaeological Museum of the Camonica Valley in Cividate Camuno, Federica Molteni will narrate Gino Bartali. Silent Hero. In a museum that chronicles Rome’s conquest of the Valley, the epic story of a man who was a champion on a bicycle and who, again on a bicycle, decided which side he was on will be retraced.

On Saturday, Aug. 26, Palazzo Besta, in Teglio, which in the 16th century was inhabited and decorated by educated and indomitable women, offers the perfect setting for Marta Cuscunà, the protagonist of La semplicità ingannata, a show that aims to give voice again to the true story of nuns who, in that same century, fought against social conventions, claiming freedom of thought and criticism of male culture.

On Sunday, Aug. 27, in the setting of the Villa Romana in Desenzano del Garda, Paola Roscioli with Lireta brings a text based on the diary of Lireta Katiaj and those, never written, by the women who on a dinghy pursued the dream of freedom and a better life beyond a sea.

On Friday, Sept. 1 at the Expiatory Chapel in Monza, Ascanio Celestini will revive in Radio Clandestine the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine. The story of the 335 men killed by the Nazis and buried in a quarry on the Ardeatina, is retraced through the oral memory of those who lived those days directly in their dramatic veracity and redelivered, through theater, in order not to forget.

On Sunday, September 3, at the Archaeological Park of Castelseprio, it will be the turn of Lella Costa with Stanca di Guerra. Castelseprio was a fortified place, destroyed in 1287 by Ottone Visconti because it was a stronghold of the enemy Della Torre family. Destroyed with orders that it was never to be rebuilt. A performance intended to make people reflect on the theme of conflict and the paths to be taken to try to make war a taboo, something “that cannot be done.”

The second edition of Human Voices will conclude on Saturday, Sept. 10, at the National Museum in Vigevano: Arianna Scommegna with Non sono nata per condividere odio plays the character of Antigone. In a museum that recounts the past mainly through objects related to funeral rites, the choices of an intransigent woman are relived. Antigone clashes with the impersonal rigidity of human laws, embodying tensions and contradictions that are still highly relevant today.

“The choice of performances,” Maria Grazia Panigada points out, “was made to offer the audience a variety of poetics and dramaturgy within the narrative style. However, all evenings have a common denominator: at the center is always the powerful desire of men and women to put themselves at the service of a story worth telling.”

Tickets for individual performances are included in the museum admission ticket, if applicable.

Reservations are required on the Eventbrite portal.

Pictured is the Lomellina Archaeological Museum, Vigevano. Photo by Maurizio Montagna © DRM-LOM.

Museums in Lombardy open up to narrative theater. Among the protagonists, Pennacchi and Celestini

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