The community storytelling work was born from the meeting of people and their 25 “mixed” Ticino families where one of the spouses comes from another culture. The methodology initially involved an interview (in one or more moments), the theatrical elaboration of the same, the construction through improvisation work with actors of a script and the staging, with the involvement of some of the interviewed people. The interview work was conducted by the playwright and director Alessandra Rossi Ghiglione together with the actress Antonella Enrietto. The theatrical interview, the foundation of the artistic and cultural process of the project, required the construction of an intimate setting where the interviewed person is at ease, for this reason it is carried out at their home, with few strangers present. Since the beginning, the interviewed people were aware of the project’s objective: to create a show on the theme of multiculturalism for the Arzo Narrative Festival.

Starting from an initial track on themes such as family, food, the remaining traditions, the language spoken at home, etc. the interviews developed independently giving birth to a collection of heterogeneous material.

In terms of community work, the themes to which greater attention had to be paid from a dramaturgical point of view were: 1) the responsibility to treat an intimate matter for some people who would then have attended the staging of their stories; 2) to treat a hot topic for Switzerland such as multiculturalism; 3) to create a structure that would allow active participation of the witnesses who had told the stories.

Based on the interview work, 3 periods of intensive meeting and theatrical construction were organized with the acting group. The playwright built a pre-script based on the interviews collected starting from scenes and recurring thematic nuclei. The texts were elaborated and transformed starting from the characteristics of expressiveness of each actor. The “table work” also included the reading of the original interviews and the discussion of the reported themes. The interview material was transformed into theatrical scenes, songs, set-ups, physical actions, developing on a “tableau” dramaturgy with extremely fluid dramaturgical bridges between one scene and another.

The staging space was conceived in three places: the show space, a passage area and a garden.

The working group of artists is of mixed origin: deliberately coming from Ticino and Italian territories. Third-generation young people also participated in the construction and staging of the show.

The acting group included professional, semi-professional figures and young people from third cultures. The realization of the project was conceived, in collaboration with the Master’s in Social and Community Theatre of Turin, also as an in-action training program, in which non-professionals confront with professionals and get trained, but also as intercultural mediators and community operators.

The protagonists of the stories were invited to participate in the event built around the show. Part of the materials used for the set-ups was provided by the families themselves.

The families were asked to participate in the realization of a multicultural banquet that was grafted into the finale of the show. This part of the show was based on these themes: “the importance of the foods of the country of origin to keep the past and present alive” and “expectations for the future”. During this part of the show the families – until then spectators – walked through the public to offer foods and drinks prepared by them and dialogue. This moment was accompanied by an original song composed by Antonella Enrietto and Luciano Gallo based on the food stories told during the interviews. The song is titled Bossanova Multi.coolti, and it’s the theme song of the project.

The staging of the show was realized in the context of two courtyards: an ancient private courtyard in the town of Arzo and at the courtyard of the Visconteo castle in Locarno. Spaces outside the theatrical tradition, but full of identity and history. Inspired by the stories of the show, the artist Maurizio Agostinetto in dialogue with the director Alessandra Rossi Ghiglione, created a scenographic setting born from the testimonies dialoguing with the context of the courtyards, with the materials and forms of which they are composed (stone, wood, earth, plants, flowers, arched passages, slopes, small hidden green spaces, etc.). Lanterns in bread shapes, wooden water spaces and exotic cloths with oriental-style floating petals, installations with ethnic cloths, costumes composed of an interweaving of leaves and branches, etc. The audience was led inside these revisited places connected to the texts and characters of the show, with a magical, evocative and at the same time extremely contemporary atmosphere.

Curiosities. The courtyard where the show was held in Arzo – Corte Solari – after the debut was informally renamed within the festival Corte SWIXX.

Insights. For a specific and concrete insight into the artistic and methodological path that underlies the project, see: Alessandra Rossi Ghiglione, Teatro Sociale e di comunità. Drammaturgia e messa in scena con i gruppi [ITA], Dino Audino, Rome, pp. 29