On Monday 15 April, at 8 p.m., at the Distilleria De Giorgi in San Cesario di Lecce, begins the artist residency of the international project “E.T.E.R.I.A. – Enhance Transborder Experiences, Rebuild Interactions of Artists”, co-financed by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, led by the Italian Centre of International Theatre Institute, with the participation of a rich international partnership formed by ITI – North Macedonia, Theatro Tsi Zakynthos (Greece), National History and Archaeology Museum of Constanta (Romania), Augmented and Virtual Reality Lab of the Department of Engineering for Innovation of University of Salento (Italy), and in cooperation with Astràgali Teatro.

After the international artist residencies held in Constanta (Romania) and Zakynthos (Greece), the project reaches its final phase between April and June. E.T.E.R.I.A. develops innovative models in the field of social and community theater and conflict transformation through the arts, encouraging the involvement of citizens, and common and shared work between artists, digital technology experts, and cultural and social operators.

The first event of the residency, which will take place between Lecce, San Cesario, and Cavallino, features “Roots and Wings – Community Telling” a demonstration of the workshop curated by Luca Fusi and Hamado Tiemtoré with refugee and asylum seeker guests of the SAI – DS host project in Cavallino run by Arci Lecce Solidarietà. A cross-cultural approach to language teaching that uses theater as an active tool for producing images and senses. A theater workshop to foster the learning of the Italian language and the knowledge of refugee people’s stories, by working on texts written during the workshop and then brought to the stage. The workshop will mainly use two forms: Drama, a theater-based approach to teaching, and Augusto Boal’s Theater of Images, a technique that works on image production through gesture.

On Tuesday, April 16, at 5 p.m., at the Distilleria De Giorgi, San Cesario di Lecce, the second event “Through The Generations – Iqbal and 250 Million Stories” will be held, with the staging of the theatrical demonstration resulting from the workshop curated by pedagogue and actor Cosimo Guarini of Astràgali Teatro and involving the boys and girls of the Primary School of the Istituto Comprensivo di San Cesario di Lecce. The theme addressed is that of the exploitation of child labor to which the date of April 16, International Day Against Child Slavery, is dedicated.

On Wednesday, April 17, at 8 p.m., at Astràgali Teatro, Via Giuseppe Candido, 23, Lecce, the E.T.E.R.I.A. project will be officially presented in a public meeting attended by Fabio Tolledi, president of the Italian Centre of International Theatre Institute ITI – UNESCO, representatives of the various partners involved in the initiative, and the artists involved in the scheduled events.

The third event, titled “Resist – Singing Memories,” is scheduled for Thursday, April 25, at 8:30 p.m., at Distilleria De Giorgi in San Cesario di Lecce. Music becomes an instrument of social denunciation and historical memory with the remembrance and interpretation of songs of struggle and resistance, on Italy’s Liberation Day from Nazi-fascism. The voice of Anna Cinzia Villani will interpret them, together with the Astràgali theater company.

The project closes on Sunday, April 28, at 8:30 p.m., with a special performance at the Archaeological Museum of Cavallino of the new international show “COMBAT! Compianto per il corpo del nemico ucciso” produced as part of the ETERIA project and directed by Fabio Tolledi. The show, which questions the tearing conflicts of the present, will feature actors and actresses from Italy, Romania, Greece, North Macedonia, Turkey, Tunisia, Albania, Burkina Faso and Spain. The artistic group will work intensively during the two-week residency to create this version of the play, developing what was achieved in Romania and Greece. On stage will be Filareta Atanasova, Ermelinda Bircaj, Georgia Givetsi, Lopez Carla Mazarrota, Matteo Mele, Natasha Petrovick, Roberta Quarta, Simonetta Rotundo, Simone Spirovska, Khouloud Thabet, Hamado Tiemtoré, Sanna Toivanen, Onur Uysal, Anna Cinzia Villani. A site-specific performance that will also feature digital installations, the result of a long research conducted in synergy between the project’s artistic team and experts in digital technologies from the Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory of the Department of Engineering for Innovation at the University of Salento. All appointments are free to attend.