Image from the March Against All Wars organized by SOU – School of Architecture for Children of Farm Cultural Park, which joined the Community Minestrone Parade, an artistic format created by SCT Centre, held on March 29, 2025 in Favara (AG)
Curated by Alessandra Rossi Ghiglione – Director of SCT Centre
The persistence of terrible war and violence scenarios in Ukraine and the Middle East, intertwined with the rapid political changes of recent months caused by the new US presidency in relations with Europe, is shaping a present very different from what we are used to. It is a present in which, more than changing daily life – which for the majority of us still resembles itself – our imagination and the overall feeling with which we live in the world are changing.
For the first time since the end of the Second World War, the thought of war ‘at home’ appears at breakfast along with the first news of the day, as in that suggestion a few days ago on how to pack a suitcase with the most important things to take away in case we wake up in a dawn of war. Every day is inhabited by new words and new symbols that increase fear and uncertainty.
All this rapid change in the vital atmosphere in which we are immersed questions us not only as individuals and citizens, but also as artists and cultural operators, and even more so as theater people who work with people.
It seems increasingly clear to us that everything we do is not only theater and art, but is, can and must be an action of resistance and peace. Resistance to the culture of violence that animates personal relationships – in families, in classes, in organizations, in the streets – and the construction of peace, in the ability to foster trust, acceptance, sharing and to support faith in the universal rights of the person.
Every theater action with groups and communities is also increasingly an action of European citizenship. The construction, that is, through art and participation of a way of living with and among each other inspired by those values of solidarity, peace, freedom and democracy that animated the founding fathers of Europe, when they created – from the rubble and the infinite violence and suffering of the Second World War – a new vision of bonds and values that united the inhabitants of France, Italy, Germany and all other countries. A vision that is still a dream for all humanity.
Believing in a dream of peace and justice, in a world of rights and freedoms is a dream that we can dream together through art. Believing in dreams is one of the tasks of theater to change the present.
