Everybody has that strange, possibly cross-eyed friend, of a certain unconscious folly, who jumps in on discussions to say irrelevant things, things that are outside the logic of linear communication. With a guy like that one has three options: to deride him, to ignore him (thus missing out on his splendid freedom of thought), or to love him. This year, es.terni festival of contemporary creation chooses, once again, to love its cross-eyed friends, and to line up with those who stubbornly seek to adopt a new vocabulary so as to understand them. Thus, the Manneken Pis (the little boy doing pee pee) is not only intended as one of the most noted European symbols, but also as an invitation to non-literal interpretation, an invitation to break the linearity of an already old discourse. Es.terni courageously opens doors, so that someone might enter, it offers choices, so that the public are free to define their preferences, it unhinges door frames, in order to introduce differences, and it invents languages for the vocabularies to be. It exists so as to encourage the emergence of a network on a local, national and international level, a network that would have Terni as its epicenter. It exists so that the city might question its own identity and its own talents. And it might so happen that the spectators become actors, and that the stage becomes the city, and that the public become people. That gazes might cross, clash, lose each other only so as to find one another again. And thought might take on an active part in the quest for innovative solutions. Es.terni is not an end in itself, it is only an instrument: it is the constant search for and suggestion of something different.

Download the programme  (.pdf, 2Mb)