The Actor Factory staged in Milan – to tell young people about work and entrepreneurship
Narrating entrepreneurship, its values, its pace, its history and future, in order to acknowledge and promote the key features that distinguish Italian identity and its “do, do well and do good” approach, with a view not to lose Italy’s place as second manufacturing country in Europe, just after Germany. Entrepreneurship understood in terms of work, wealth and well-being, innovation and community spirit, and narration intended as the representation of values and as the backbone of genuine “industrial pride”, on which to build our sustainable development.
To attain all this, we need to make use of all the languages best suited to illustrate our current reality: films and videos, such as those made by film-makers capturing factories and workshops through inquisitive lenses; writings, such as those selected over the past three years by the ‘Premio per la letteratura d’impresa’ (‘Corporate literature award’), organised by ItalyPost; photographs, such as the images showcased at the outstanding exhibitions held at the MAST Foundation in Bologna, co-founded by outstanding entrepreneur Isabella Seragnoli; contemporary art, such as the Ritratti (Portraits) and NOw/here installations by Gian Maria Tosatti, with a nod to Kounellis, Burri and Tàpies, currently on display at the HangarBicocca site – a “spotlight on the industrial era”, according to the Il Sole24Ore, 2 April. And also music, such as Il Canto della fabbrica (Song of the factory) performed by the Orchestra da Camera Italiana and directed by Salvatore Accardo, a piece inspired by the sounds and beat of the Pirelli plant in Settimo Torinese, a building designed by Renzo Piano. And finally, to get back on topic, theatre.
L’Umana Impresa. La fabbrica degli attori (Human enterprise. The actor factory) was staged last night at the Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan, directed by Stefano De Luca: the theatre’s Great Hall was packed and the audience responded with continued and thunderous applause – we’ll go into more details shortly.
Here we are then, theatre. Some time ago, in autumn 2015, L’impresa va in scena (Business takes the stage) epitomised the theme encompassing the Culture Week organised by Confindustria and Museimpresa, featuring theatre performances in ten Italian cities. A few years before that, at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, director Serena Sinigaglia presented Settimo, la fabbrica e il lavoro (Settimo, factory and work), a piece integrating the accounts of labourers, technicians and engineers from the Pirelli plant.
Then, over time, an increasing number of initiatives arose, all inspired by the strong bonds that tie together entrepreneurship and performance, industrial manufacturing and the craft skills involved in designing sets and costumes, research labs and theatre labs – all activities driven by a common awareness that both entrepreneurship and theatre are “communal” experiences (as also attested by the efforts in promoting and supporting theatres undertaken by entrepreneurial families such as Falck, Borletti and Pirelli in driving the foundation of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan).
Andrée Shammah, activities coordinator at the Teatro Parenti, deeply believes in the relationship between theatre and entrepreneurship and in the value of cultural crossings, and, as well as likening “entrepreneurship” to the efforts made by those who bring theatre to life and focusing on the concept of theatre as a “lab”, also integrates common notions such as ‘sharing’ and ‘contagion’ – cum and tangere (from the Latin, ‘with’ and ‘to touch’). Because, indeed, the spirit of theatre is contagious, it infects an audience, and an audience is rewarding only when it’s engaged. Contagious, too, is the drive to innovation and engagement in factories, as engagement breeds competitiveness, and therefore progress.
Connections that consolidate relationships. Once upon a time, there was a bolt factory in Via Pier Lombardo, just where the Teatro Parenti stands now, and Andrée Shammah jokingly says that, “Here, perhaps, there are sprites inhabiting the site and inspiring its soul” – industrious sprites.
But let’s go back to the L’Umana Impresa. The piece is the outcome of a protracted workshop project by six young actors (Tobia Dal Corso Polzot, Elia Galeotti, Lorenzo Giovannetti, Claudia Grassi, Edoardo Rivoira and Emilia Tiburzi), led by director and coordinator Stefano De Luca and playwriter Veronica Del Vecchio (whose accomplishments also include bringing back to life works by Dino Buzzati and Leonardo Sinisgalli).
After conducting research in the archives of the Pirelli Foundation, conversations, and sessions in high-tech industrial “research and development” labs, the actors put together a performance narrating Pirelli’s 150 years of history, starting with its founder, Giovan Battista Pirelli. And, at the same time, they challenged themselves to work as a team, a team busy undertaking research and reinterpretation activities on the stage –
a veritable “actor factory” indeed, which well describes an initiative that travels between past and future, just like manufacturing does. An open-ended, experimental piece that revolves around eight key terms: Materials, Factory, Machine, Theatre, Path, Worlds, Nature, and Future. Yet, also an instructive investigation of the multiple meanings embodied in the notion of “entrepreneurship” and of the motivations behind industrial culture and production processes, motivations that change together with the times, technologies, methods, working conditions and markets. And, moreover, a multi-voiced reflection on the relationship between historical awareness and contemporary challenges, on the power of memory as a condition for corporate competitiveness, on the “metamorphosis” set in motion by production and social processes.
Indeed, the nature of products and services, of story-telling and innovations, are the factors that, over time and in such complex and selective global markets, consolidate the ability to withstand competition.
In essence, what we see played out on stage are topics that have been long neglected in theatre performances – the value of entrepreneurship and work, and this also gives the chance to show new generations how enterprises are in fact extraordinary places, in which to nurture personal projects and ambitions.
The première was held last week, in front of a special audience comprising 450 young adults, aged from 16 to 18 years old, from technical institutes in Milan. “When they left, they were spellbound,” stated managers at the Pirelli Foundations, “as they discovered a world, the industrial world, which they didn’t know anything about, brimming with digital technologies, professional challenges, a future rife with personal and professional opportunities”. And, in the case of Pirelli, also a universe featuring high-tech products connected to competitive sports, such as Formula 1 racing, as well as embodying a cutting-edge culture embracing environmental and social sustainability, communication, and the relationship between science and society.
Now, the ambition is to “bring the L’Umana Impresa to other schools, to university students at the Polytechnic and Bocconi universities in Milan, and then to other cities”. Entrepreneurship on stage, then, to keep on weaving “a future-oriented story”.
Narrating entrepreneurship, its values, its pace, its history and future, in order to acknowledge and promote the key features that distinguish Italian identity and its “do, do well and do good” approach, with a view not to lose Italy’s place as second manufacturing country in Europe, just after Germany. Entrepreneurship understood in terms of work, wealth and well-being, innovation and community spirit, and narration intended as the representation of values and as the backbone of genuine “industrial pride”, on which to build our sustainable development.
To attain all this, we need to make use of all the languages best suited to illustrate our current reality: films and videos, such as those made by film-makers capturing factories and workshops through inquisitive lenses; writings, such as those selected over the past three years by the ‘Premio per la letteratura d’impresa’ (‘Corporate literature award’), organised by ItalyPost; photographs, such as the images showcased at the outstanding exhibitions held at the MAST Foundation in Bologna, co-founded by outstanding entrepreneur Isabella Seragnoli; contemporary art, such as the Ritratti (Portraits) and NOw/here installations by Gian Maria Tosatti, with a nod to Kounellis, Burri and Tàpies, currently on display at the HangarBicocca site – a “spotlight on the industrial era”, according to the Il Sole24Ore, 2 April. And also music, such as Il Canto della fabbrica (Song of the factory) performed by the Orchestra da Camera Italiana and directed by Salvatore Accardo, a piece inspired by the sounds and beat of the Pirelli plant in Settimo Torinese, a building designed by Renzo Piano. And finally, to get back on topic, theatre.
L’Umana Impresa. La fabbrica degli attori (Human enterprise. The actor factory) was staged last night at the Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan, directed by Stefano De Luca: the theatre’s Great Hall was packed and the audience responded with continued and thunderous applause – we’ll go into more details shortly.
Here we are then, theatre. Some time ago, in autumn 2015, L’impresa va in scena (Business takes the stage) epitomised the theme encompassing the Culture Week organised by Confindustria and Museimpresa, featuring theatre performances in ten Italian cities. A few years before that, at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, director Serena Sinigaglia presented Settimo, la fabbrica e il lavoro (Settimo, factory and work), a piece integrating the accounts of labourers, technicians and engineers from the Pirelli plant.
Then, over time, an increasing number of initiatives arose, all inspired by the strong bonds that tie together entrepreneurship and performance, industrial manufacturing and the craft skills involved in designing sets and costumes, research labs and theatre labs – all activities driven by a common awareness that both entrepreneurship and theatre are “communal” experiences (as also attested by the efforts in promoting and supporting theatres undertaken by entrepreneurial families such as Falck, Borletti and Pirelli in driving the foundation of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan).
Andrée Shammah, activities coordinator at the Teatro Parenti, deeply believes in the relationship between theatre and entrepreneurship and in the value of cultural crossings, and, as well as likening “entrepreneurship” to the efforts made by those who bring theatre to life and focusing on the concept of theatre as a “lab”, also integrates common notions such as ‘sharing’ and ‘contagion’ – cum and tangere (from the Latin, ‘with’ and ‘to touch’). Because, indeed, the spirit of theatre is contagious, it infects an audience, and an audience is rewarding only when it’s engaged. Contagious, too, is the drive to innovation and engagement in factories, as engagement breeds competitiveness, and therefore progress.
Connections that consolidate relationships. Once upon a time, there was a bolt factory in Via Pier Lombardo, just where the Teatro Parenti stands now, and Andrée Shammah jokingly says that, “Here, perhaps, there are sprites inhabiting the site and inspiring its soul” – industrious sprites.
But let’s go back to the L’Umana Impresa. The piece is the outcome of a protracted workshop project by six young actors (Tobia Dal Corso Polzot, Elia Galeotti, Lorenzo Giovannetti, Claudia Grassi, Edoardo Rivoira and Emilia Tiburzi), led by director and coordinator Stefano De Luca and playwriter Veronica Del Vecchio (whose accomplishments also include bringing back to life works by Dino Buzzati and Leonardo Sinisgalli).
After conducting research in the archives of the Pirelli Foundation, conversations, and sessions in high-tech industrial “research and development” labs, the actors put together a performance narrating Pirelli’s 150 years of history, starting with its founder, Giovan Battista Pirelli. And, at the same time, they challenged themselves to work as a team, a team busy undertaking research and reinterpretation activities on the stage –
a veritable “actor factory” indeed, which well describes an initiative that travels between past and future, just like manufacturing does. An open-ended, experimental piece that revolves around eight key terms: Materials, Factory, Machine, Theatre, Path, Worlds, Nature, and Future. Yet, also an instructive investigation of the multiple meanings embodied in the notion of “entrepreneurship” and of the motivations behind industrial culture and production processes, motivations that change together with the times, technologies, methods, working conditions and markets. And, moreover, a multi-voiced reflection on the relationship between historical awareness and contemporary challenges, on the power of memory as a condition for corporate competitiveness, on the “metamorphosis” set in motion by production and social processes.
Indeed, the nature of products and services, of story-telling and innovations, are the factors that, over time and in such complex and selective global markets, consolidate the ability to withstand competition.
In essence, what we see played out on stage are topics that have been long neglected in theatre performances – the value of entrepreneurship and work, and this also gives the chance to show new generations how enterprises are in fact extraordinary places, in which to nurture personal projects and ambitions.
The première was held last week, in front of a special audience comprising 450 young adults, aged from 16 to 18 years old, from technical institutes in Milan. “When they left, they were spellbound,” stated managers at the Pirelli Foundations, “as they discovered a world, the industrial world, which they didn’t know anything about, brimming with digital technologies, professional challenges, a future rife with personal and professional opportunities”. And, in the case of Pirelli, also a universe featuring high-tech products connected to competitive sports, such as Formula 1 racing, as well as embodying a cutting-edge culture embracing environmental and social sustainability, communication, and the relationship between science and society.
Now, the ambition is to “bring the L’Umana Impresa to other schools, to university students at the Polytechnic and Bocconi universities in Milan, and then to other cities”. Entrepreneurship on stage, then, to keep on weaving “a future-oriented story”.