Playing Identities Performing Heritage

Developing a new sense of shared European identity based on common values, history and knowledge

The idea

Playing Identities, Performing Heritage is built upon the idea that aesthetic experience through theatricality can convey meanings at their fullest extent. Theatre always performs intangible heritage, keeps alive a shared memory, confirms or re-shapes traditional knowledge. People collected around the stage share the same competence in that very moment.

The Background

The idea behind Playing Identities, Performing Heritage lies in the attempt to experiment processes of artistic creation based on the creolisation of diverse European national theatrical traditions, as well as on the relationship between the performers themselves, on one side, and the performers and the public, on the other. The project is the product of a peculiar cultural work-plan carried out by the University of Siena, together with its European partners.

Methodology matters

We consider theatre as an experimental, interdisciplinary, open space. By stimulating performances that respond to our core themes, we hope to prompt discussion on some pressing questions concerning creolisation, citizenship and the commons, including: how can the performer interpret, through the language of theatre, the changing Europe of the active citizenship and the commons?