Prove Generali di un Festival: il Festival Inteatro 1978 nelle foto di Alfonso Napolitano

Senigallia City of Photography presents, as the first exhibition of the winter season, a project entirely dedicated to the world of theater. The extraordinary adventure of the Inteatro International Festival in Polverigi began at the end of the 1970s, and the 1978 edition, in particular, can be considered the true dress rehearsal of a festival that, over its long history, has managed to gain a prominent position in the national and international theater festival scene.

The photos of Alfonso Napolitano compose, through hundreds of shots, real sequences that capture the environment and its protagonists during years when there were neither adequate technical means nor the habit of documenting cultural events. The exhibition retraces, through around a hundred shots, some of the performances and workshops that marked this edition, the first that can truly be considered international, with the participation of 14 regional groups, an Italian company, Pupi e Fresedde, two foreign performances (the American Teatro Campesino and the Venezuelan Teatro TRAC), and a special guest, Augusto Boal, founder of the famous Teatro Do Oprimido in Brazil. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog with texts curated by Velia Papa, Artistic Director of Inteatro. During the exhibition’s opening at 6:45 pm, the docu-film L’Isola del Teatro will be screened, telling the story of the Inteatro Festival, a journey spanning over 40 years narrated through interviews, archival footage, images, and backstage scenes of the festival’s protagonists and the history of contemporary theater and dance.

The directorial perspective is both historical, as it covers a period from the late ’70s to the present, and artistic, as it reflects the evolution of the international cultural landscape through the prominent figures who made theater and dance history, the performances that marked an era, and the notable personalities who, even for just one edition, passed through the Polverigi Festival.

The exhibition was created as part of the Senigallia City of Photography project, promoted by the Marche Region and organized by the Municipality of Senigallia and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Jesi.