Edoardo Ripani

In recent years, he has been developing his own theatrical practice and has been focusing on a  documentary approach with several references to history, one of his main passions. His approach to the  subject can be defined as almost scientific, as he likes to combine different documentary materials (articles;  testimonies; real facts) and to transpose them into theatre. At the same time, he is focusing on a form that  goes beyond the black-box and does not necessarily involve professional actors. 

He was trained as an actor, before in Italy, with the experience of the independent group Aikot 27, then  around the world, with several formative experiences with Jim Slowiak, Jairo Cuesta, Marco Sgrosso, Elena  Bucci, Philippe Gaulier, Norman Taylor and Mariangela Gualtieri. 

In 2006 he graduated in theatre studies (DAMS) at the University of Bologna. In 2011 he achieved a Master  in Philosophy of Performance at the University of Macerata and in 2018 he obtained a Master’s degree in  Theatre Directing at the RITCS School of Arts in Brussels. 

Between 2012 and 2020 he has been associated actor and teacher at the Italian Institute of Culture in  Brussels and from 2020 he is one of the selected artists of “Crossing the Sea”, a long term-strategy project  that aims to establish connection and cooperation between the performing art sector in Italy and in the  Middle East and Asiatic countries. The project is supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture and Heritage. 

He is currently active in participatory projects in the peripheries of Brussels, with Casi-UO in Anderlecht  (association that works since almost 50 years with Italian migrants in Belgium) and with the working-space  Transfocollect in Schaerbeek (space of theatrical expression for young people, mainly with a migration background). He is also a assistant teacher at the RITCS School of Arts in Brussels for the “Transversaal  Atelier”, a multidisciplinary workshop focusing on participation, which involves students of different media.  He is touring as a performer in “All Inclusive” by Julian Hetzel, a performance which has been presented in  several European Festivals such as “Actoral”, “Impulse”, “Belluard”, “Biennale Teatro”, “Spielart” and  “Point communs”. His last performance “Fratelli. Qual doglia incombe sulla mia città?” premiered in August  2021in Festival Epos/TAU (Porto San Giorgio, Italy) and it was well received, in Belgium and in Italy. 

He is first assistant of the Belgian filmmaker Manu Riche for his new docu-fiction “Charbon” and, at the  same time, he is working as a theatre-maker on a new performance about the communities of the  Apennines from Central Italy, “La montagna è finita” (“The mountain is over”), an Italian-Belgian co production that will premiere during November 2023 in Genk.

For me theatre has become a tool of civil and social expression, the best way to transmit stories that could not be told otherwise, about issues that could disappear from public discussion. It is also a way to give voice to the "forgotten ones", to the "last ones".

I am trying to develop a personal way of research, almost "anthropological” or simply " documentary". Starting from the meeting with a place, the inhabitants and the architecture of a community, I collect stories, biographies, characters, images, thoughts, dreams and nightmares of the place, to transform them in a performative experience.

“La montagna è finita” (“The mountain is over”) will be the next step in my artistic research.

This time the geographical area of my investigation will be the central-Apennine region in Italy, my region.

Depopulation, economic crises, natural disasters (like the massive earthquake of 2016-2017), lack of infrastructure have turned the region into one of the "forgotten places” in Italy and in Europe. Feelings of abandonment and anger have mixed and fed each other. But this is not a specific condition: the central Apennines and their communities are an example of those small communities all around the European continent, which have been marginalized and disintegrated by globalisation in the last decades.

My trip starts in 2016: while the earth was shaking hard in my native region, my father fell ill with lung cancer. The tumour was discovered on 5 January 2017, and on 1 June of the same year it took him away. My father died together with his beloved mountain.

I want to excavate metaphorically in my familiar memories and in the ruins of the earthquake area. Following the fault of the earthquake, which crosses the bed of the river Tronto and cuts the ancient Roman road Salaria, I will make a physical and metaphysical journey into the mountains, made by images, music and biographies. From this personal and local focus, I would like to speak to all Europeans, giving a universal example of human and social condition of loss, in front of the economic and bureaucratic winning machine.

“La montagna è finita” is a production by Theater Antigone, C-Mine, Arsenaal, ViernulVier, Pianofabriek and Amat Marche.