Biennale Teatro 2025

The 53rd International Theatre Festival will run from 31 May to 15 June 2025, directed by Willem Dafoe. The programme will feature daily events with the most important protagonists ot the contemporary theatrical scene, along with the productions made in the context of the Biennale College Teatro, the training project aimed at young artists.

Willem Dafoe began his artistic career at age 19 when he joined Theatre X (1975-1977), one of the first experimental theatre groups in the US. In Europe, where he lived in 1976, he was at the legendary Mickery Theatre in Amsterdam, the heart of alternative international theatre. In 1977 in New York he co-founded The Wooster Group with which he performed for over twenty years until 2003.

Gallery

Introduction

The President

Pietrangelo Buttafuoco

“The body is poetry, from the Greek ποιεῖν, i.e. to make and produce. The theatrical text traverses and inhabits the body, in the sense of the beating heart of theatre. Thus, the body is the actor’s instrument, the interlocutor between dramaturgy and audience, the zero degree of making theatre”.

The Director

Willem Dafoe

“I made a specific decision not to go shopping for work to present but rather to express what I know. I wanted to present people I worked with, I have admired or whose work I return to. Basically my impulse is to present pieces that express what is powerful in the theatre”.