Theatre and Higher Education
“I have never taught my students anything; I just tried to put them in the best conditions to learn”
Albert Einstein
1- Presentation
In addition to normal teaching activities, starting from 2012, Etoile partner of the theatre Franco Tagliavini, activates a sector specialized in higher theatrical training within its offer. Paths that arise from a close union between the production realities of the theatre and the need to train artists with multidisciplinary skills, perfectly in line with Etoile’s primary vocation for the theatrical training of young people, and the theatre Franco Tagliavini as a new objective.
Year 2012 marks the transition from the approach to the theatre of enthusiasts to the training of technical professionals. A step also guided by the need for an evolution of the characteristics required to the figures of the show, in particular the figure of the performer.
The higher education courses intend to train actors who are, as well as interpreters, creators and managers of themselves. Through the interaction of theatre, music and performing arts, students are confronted with different theatrical aspects, acquiring expressive declinations and imaginative spaces suitable for artistic creation. The professional figure at the end of the course will be that of a multidisciplinary professional, able to enter innovative occupational fields.
A figure who can satisfy the needs not only of the large theatre companies, but also of the smaller realities that in recent years have grown exponentially in our territory. Small theatres, or small companies, today are better organized and are able to plan entire theatre seasons. More resized realities, indeed, offer the possibility of confronting and taking action in the various sectors of a theatrical production. Not only actors, but also project managers of small productions, theatre technicians with basic skills, theatrical masks, playwrights and directors. Through an active involvement in programming and adopting the method of learning by doing, the Franco Tagliavini Theatre in Novellara, a theatre of residence, offers the students involved in these higher education courses a training experience that has no equal in Italy.
Nowadays, three advanced training projects are active, which distinguish Etoile and the Franco Tagliavini Theater, not only locally, but also nationally and internationally.
ITAF
International Theater Academy of FITA
The collaboration between Etoile, the Theater Franco Tagliavini and the Italian Amateur Theatre Federation gave birth in 2012 to the first edition of ITAF International Theatre Academy of FITA, a permanent school of the performing arts, aimed at young people who want to professionalize their skills in the artistic field. The I.T.A.F project is aimed at Italian FITA registered young people and young people from companies in the European Union, between 18 and 30 years old. Through workshops in theatre, singing, dance, mime and direction, conducted by Italian and foreign teachers, theatrical skills and abilities are deepened. These are opportunities also to create an exchange between community cultures, which makes it possible to produce performances to be represented, both in Italy and abroad, on the occasion of international events.
The contents of the stage focus on acting techniques, character study, choreography and stage art techniques, directing techniques, singing, movement on stage, improvisation, notions of sound and lighting. All contents are addressed through practical exercises and group work and are aimed at creating a dance theatre performance in Italian and foreign languages, with the aim of replicating it in various Italian theatres. The overall course of the school includes 224 hours of training, divided into 4 work sessions, plus any repetitions in Italian or foreign theatres. All sessions take place in Reggio Emilia, at the Borgo delle Querce, house of Etoile European Theatre Centre.
Itaf can be considered as a research project which encourages a new working methodology, namely that of the theatre laboratory, a protected place par excellence where the actor can experience and propose his humanity to others, after having authentically worked on him/herself through his/her own body, voice and movement. A place where it is not just up to the director to convey emotions and passion, but where the creativity and ability of the actors are the protagonists. A methodology that makes the diversity of each a founding and characterizing element.
After a careful study of the Italian training realities in the theatrical field, Etoile aims to activate a path for a professional figure who does not limit him/herself to treading the scenes, but is able to make a design contribution, also through the management of ‘play and its organization.
Lab Academy
Lab Academy was born in 2016; a project that was born by the need for professional evolution linked to the figures of the show, in particular to the more complex and complete figure of the performer. The aim of Lab Academy is to create a training-professional path, at the end of which the students are able to possess skills in the field of performing arts and live performances. A professional figure able to be competitive for his own skills, but who is equally able to produce and promote him/herself, finalizing his/her skills in a correct and immediate insertion into the world of work. Objective of the project: development of the managerial and self-entrepreneurial skills that these figures need. The teaching aims to provide participants with additional tools with respect to the acquisition and consolidation of specific actor skills, focused on self-entrepreneurship and the ability to disseminate their productions. This serves to overcome the limit of the actor or performer trained to carry out high quality performative actions, but with little knowledge on how to market and make a quality work also a successful experience, both from the point of view of the public and from the point of view of economic sustainability and inclusion in wide-ranging theatrical circuits.
The articulation of the path consists of 3 main teaching methodologies, to respond to the general aims of the operation and the objectives of the project: a classroom phase to provide participants with a common base of fundamental knowledge to become experts in their profession, a project work phase, to be carried out parallel to the classroom phase in order to make the skills acquired in the classroom operational and thus fix the learning, a third stage of internship, where each participant, individually, will be able to experience the learning acquired during the classroom phases and consolidate them through practical experiences within companies active in the area.
Since 2018 Lab Academy has started individual accompaniment paths. The students identified by the artistic direction begin to follow a training project, built and designed on the individual, on the basis of their skills and skills previously acquired. A formative accompaniment lasting an entire academic year, which also sees students as protagonists of the productions of Etoile and the Franco Tagliavini Theatre in Novellara.
These training courses have always believed in the inseparable binomial between art and theater, in the comparison and dialogue between the different forms of art intended as an added value for the creation and training of a multifaceted and complete artist, as well as in the continuous dialogue and in putting in relation between apparently different realities for the realization of innovative ideas.
Architeatro
Hence the “Archi-teatro”, Etoile’s project , in collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture and Design of the Polytechnic of Turin and Theater Franco Tagliavini. A project aimed at students of the three-year and master’s degree courses in Architecture of the Polytechnic of Turin and 10 young performers from outside the University. A practical experience of co-designing and sharing an experiential experience, a group of future architects and young performers who try to redesign the relationship between architecture and theatre, delivering new points of view through artistic creation. On the occasion of this path, a “game” will be witnessed that aims at the search for new languages, a healthy contamination that will allow us to identify new horizons; unknown horizons, apparently incomprehensible, but which reveal themselves to be bearers of breaking points of view and bearers of a new planning.
Today, in the world of training and work, the focus is on autonomy, which, if understood as the possibility of making one’s own active and independent contribution, certainly has a positive meaning, it should not be confused or made to fall back into the absence of dialogue. Archi-teatro instead aims to make different forms of art dialogue, starting a process of collaboration and uniting what we usually think is divided.
2- Technical information
International Theater Academy of FITA
Anno Accademico di riferimento Academic year of reference | Numero Allievi Number of students | Ore di formazione svolte Hours of training carried out | Numero repliche / eventi Number of replicas / events |
2012 – 2013 | 10 | 240 | 5 |
2013 – 2014 | 12 | 240 | 3 |
2014 – 2015 | 9 | 240 | 3 |
2015 – 2016 | 7 | 240 | 2 |
2016 – 2017 | 11 | 240 | 2 |
2017 – 2018 | 8 | 240 | 3 |
2018 – 2019 | 8 | 240 | 4 |
2019 – 2020 | 9 | 240 | 4 |
2020 – 2021 | 11 | In corso In progress | In corso In progress |
Totale Allievi Total students | Totale ore Total hours | Totale repliche/eventi Total replicas/events | |
85 | 2.160 | 26 |
Lab Academy
Anno Accademico di riferimento Academic year of reference | Numero Allievi Number of students | Ore di formazione svolte Hours of training carried out | Numero repliche / eventi Number of replicas / events |
2016 – 2017 | 10 | 600 | 3 |
2017 – 2018 | 10 | 600 | 4 |
2018 – 2019 | 2 | 1000 | 5 |
2019 – 2020 | 2 | 1000 | 9 |
Totale Allievi Total students | Totale ore Total hours | Totale repliche/eventi Total replicas/events | |
24 | 3.200 | 21 |
Archi – teatro
Anno Accademico di riferimento Academic year of reference | Numero Allievi Number of students | Ore di formazione svolte Hours of training carried out | Numero repliche / eventi Number of replicas / events |
2018 – 2019 | 17 | 75 | 2 |
2019 – 2020 | 17 | 75 | 2 |
Totale Allievi Total students | Totale ore Total hours | Totale repliche/eventi Total replicas/events | |
34 | 150 | 4 |
3- Reports
4- Material produced
Prof.ssa Anna Sica
Anna Sica (since 2006 Anna De Domenico Sica) is associate professor of Performing Arts at the University of Palermo. She is considered one of the leading declamation experts. She has published the results of her research in numerous volumes and essays, including La Drammatica – Metodo italiano (2013), The Italian Method of La Drammatica (2014), L’arte massimo (2017), D’Amore e dell’arte . Letters to Eleonora Duse (2021). She was also responsible for the discovery of Eleonora Duse’s personal library in Cambridge, about which she wrote in Eleonora Duse’s Library. The Disclosure of Aesthetic Value in Real Acting (2010) and in The Murray Edwards Duse Collection (2012). Her most significant works on Russian theater have been published in English and translated into Russian. She currently teaches History of Theater and Entertainment and History of Directing and Acting at the DAMS in Palermo.
“ITAF and DAMS of Palermo are partners in a Convention because DAMS believes that ITAF’s higher education program reflects the demand for education in theatrical practice of students who enroll in our study courses. The education provided by ITAF presents for university students a double educational value because it allows a verification of theatrical theories in the exercise of stage practice and an adequate artistic competence that allow them to achieve solid foundations even for those of them who want to undertake the profession of ‘actor. The ITAF program is also of particular interest for university courses that are dedicated to history, and equally to the theories and practices of the scene because it concretely implements an international educational plan guaranteeing experiences and training abroad thanks to a partnership network. that the ITAF boasts with associations and foreign theatrical bodies. The laboratories that the DAMS of Palermo has launched in collaboration with the ITAF from 2019 to today (even remotely) have found the enthusiastic support and appreciation from the students. Furthermore, thanks to the agreement signed, currently two students of the Entertainment curriculum of the second year of the DAMS course in Palermo are attending the ITAF practical courses in Reggio Emilia with excellent results and passionate participation.”
Anna Sica
Avv. Carmelo Pace
The Amateur Theater must have as its objective a quality theatrical offer. In addition to creating respect for the public, the quality of the proposal contributes to promoting the theater as an irreplaceable form of live entertainment. Above all, young people must be educated, who are setting out on the theatrical experience. Young people must be aware that their experience, in addition to being a human experience, has a function of involvement among the new generations. It is not certain that thanks to the opportunities offered by FITA they will become professional actors, they will be able to remain good actors who are passionate about making theater. But if they wanted to choose to be professionals, ITAF will make it possible to understand how much they are worth and how much sacrifice this entails.
It is a unique opportunity that FITA offers to its young and enthusiastic actors: to learn from great masters and to deal with experiences from different territories, even abroad. For this reason the selections are rigid: every year the young FITA actors, after a selection in their home region, access the final one which, if passed, will lead them on an artistic and community journey that they will leave in their education, but also in their hearts, an indelible trace. This is the sense of being part of a large community such as FITA which enhances the function of the Amateur Theater in the national and international context also with its training courses. It is no coincidence that this year the Italian amateur theater is represented by FITA and with the ITAF show at the World Amateur Theater Festival in Monte Carlo.
Carmelo Pace