When did you fall in love with theatre? What do you remember as your first dramatic encounter? Authors invited to this year’s Stückemarkt tell us about their early passions – a tt09 series, exclusive for Theatertreffen-Blog.
In my time at primary school, I must have been seven or eight years old, our class, like so many others, used to visit the Teatro Trebbo, a small theatre in Milan, once a year.
The Trebbo used to put up shows especially for primary school students, it probably still does so nowadays. These shows were matched up with the syllabus of the year, so they put on stage scientific topics like Maths, historical ones like the Egyptians or Feudalism, social themes like the use and importance of water and such like.
The best bit about it was, that the children were completely involved as part of the show. I mean, the audience was called on stage by the actors. Although there was no stage. It was just a big empty space covered with fitted carpet, shared by the actors and us – and the actors made us play.
I still remember that I played the Two in the show about mathematics. I carried a big „two“ made of papier mâché on my shoulders. In the show about Egypt I was Anubi, the jackal. In feudalism I was a vassal and in the show about water I was a bidet.
So, my first experience with the theatre was at the same time as a spectator and as an actor, as receptor and creator. At the time I had no idea that this was theatre, it was just fun, by now I would probably call it „postdramatic“.
That was the best I would be attending for years. The following theatre experiences with the school were merely boring. So I kept away from the theatre during my adolescence. Until, at the age of eighteen, I fell in love with a young actress and experienced a new, pleasant, first time in the theatre.