Anagoor

Friday 20 July 2018 at 12 noon
Ca’ Giustinian - Sala delle Colonne

The Anagoor company, which in just a few years has moved to the centre of attention of Italian and European theatre, has been attributed the Silver Lion for Theatre 2018.

Founded in 2000 by Simone Derai and Paola Dallan, the Anagoor company has worked in depth for its research into a new language, borrowing from images and symbols that lead back to our cultural memory.
“The work of Anagoor, never wanting in a powerful aesthetic, is successful in bringing important themes to a wide audience; Anagoor is never popular in its choice of texts, yet it is, and nobly, in its artistic rendition. What makes its work sometimes conceptual but also profoundly artisanal is the fact that they do not delegate artistic decisions to anyone, that as a collective they are able to do everything by themselves, from writing the scripts to building the sets and making the costumes which are always visually stunning, to the point that their productions are in demand in many Italian and foreign theatres” (from the motivation).

The Anagoor company was founded by Simone Derai and Paola Dallan in Castelfranco Veneto in 2000, established from the very beginning as an experiment in collective work. Today, directors Simone Derai and Marco Menegoni work regularly with Patrizia Vercesi, Mauro Martinuz and Giulio Favotto, while other artists and professionals join them continually, enriching their growth and underscoring their nature as a collective. An ongoing workshop, open to professionals and amateurs, Anagoor is the hub of a creative process open to the city and its diverse generations where, in a strenuous attempt to generate a theatrical art of the polis, there is an ideal continuity between educational activities in schools, work within the territory, the call for community involvement, the company's productions. Anagoor's theatre responds to an iconic aesthetic that precipitates into various final formats in which the performing arts, philosophy, literature and hyper-media theatre engage in a dialogue, demanding however, strongly and by virtue of the nature of this art, to remain theatre.

Their productions include: *jeug- (2008); Tempesta (2009), winner of a special mention at the Premio Scenario; Fortuny (2011); L.I. Lingua Imperii (2012), one of the winning productions at Music Theatre NOW 2015; Virgilio Brucia (2014); Socrate il sopravvissuto / come le foglie (2016) nominated for the Premio Ubu as Production of the year. In 2012 the company approached musical theatre in the film-concert Et manchi pietà, followed by the direction of two operas: in 2013 Il Palazzo di Atlante by Luigi Rossi (1642), presented at the Sagra Musicale Malatestiana in Rimini, and in 2017 Faust by Charles Gounod, a production of the Teatro Comunale di Modena, Teatro Valli di Reggio Emilia and Teatro Municipale di Piacenza.

Anagoor has won many awards, including the “Jurislav Korenić” prize to Simone Derai as Best young director at the 53rd Festival MESS (2012), the Premio Hystrio – Castel dei Mondi (2013), the Premio ANCT for innovative experimentation in theatre, the HYSTRIO prize for direction (2016) and the Premio ReteCritica.

Since 2008 Anagoor has based its headquarters in the countryside around Treviso, at La Conigliera, a rabbit farm converted into an atelier and since 2010 it is part of the Fies Factory project at Centrale Fies – art work space.