PICCOLI PRINCIPI TEATRO

What can authorial
theater do today?

We asked ourselves this question on the first day we performed. We continue to ask it after more than 40 years in theater. Ours is the story of an open question.

The answer
of puppets and objects

1979
Alessandro Libertini founds the Piccoli Principi

1981
Debut of the show Debut of the play Pulcinella ed Euridice


1982

Chiara Fantini joins the Company
First prize at the International Festival Arrivano dal mare in Cervia with Pulcinella
ed Euridice 
Participation in the Festival Mondial des Théâtres
de Marionnettes di Charleville-Mézières 


1983

Debut of the show Così Mi piace


1984

Stregagatto Award for Così mi piace.
Debut of the show Deviazioni dalla Norma


1985

Participation in the International Festival of Theatre for Young Audiences in Montreal  
Debut of the show Narciso Amico Mio

The codes, automatics, and mannerisms of institutional theater left us perplexed. The stage interested us because it could unite arts, reformulate languages, and connect disruptively with people.

What could Pulcinella have achieved if he had been a puppet and the author was his puppeteer? This was the prelude to our poetics, which began with an incursion into puppet theater and never quite concluded.

We liked the puppets because they asked questions. First, we made them; then, they spoke to us, like Pinocchio, suggesting characters, roles, and interpretations. And about them, they asked our opinion, personal, unique, and authorial.

We then did the same with objects. Consumer society was delivering them lifeless, but to us, they seemed alive. In them, we found all the suggestions we sought to deviate from the norm and reflect on theater in our way.

The author's body
and the wisdom of the child

1986
Véronique Nah joins the Company
Debut of the show Kinderszenen at
the Teatro della Scala in Milan 

1987
Narciso Amico Mio at the Biennale du Théâtre
Jeunes Publics di Lione 

Narciso Amico Mio at the Youth Theater Festival
in Helsinki (FL).


1988

Debut of the show Una Cosa per un’Altra


1989

Debut of the show Dodici


1992

Dodici restaged in Belgium with Belgian actors


1994

Debut of the show A Partire da Miles


1995

Una cosa per un’Altra restaged by the
Blauw Vier company in Antwerp 
A partire da Miles finalist at the Stregagatto Award 95/96.


1996

ETI/Camera d'Oro Award for the video
Oltre i cavalli del Partenone


1997

A partire da Miles performed at La Cité de la Musique di Parigi

A partire da Miles performed at the Europa Jazz Festival in Le Mans


2000

Debut of La Magia delle Immagini at the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain di Saint-Étienne
Debut of La Magia delle Immagini


2001

Direction of the show De tooverfluit with the company
Het muziek Lod di Gent 


2002

“Prix des régionales” at the International Festival 
Momix for Magia delle immagini


2004

Workshop at the Musée d'art Moderne et contemporain in
Strasbourg 
Workshop at the Musée de l'Opéra in Notre-Dame
Debut of the show Il Risveglio di Sirenetta in Madrid


2006

La magia delle immagini at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris
Debut of the show Celeste at the Astrophysical Observatory in Florence
 
Debut of the show Con gli occhi di Pinocchio at
Festivaletteratura di Mantova

It then became difficult to understand whether we were manipulating the objects or the objects manipulating us. Indeed, it was they who brought our bodies onto the stage. We were not fond of showing ourselves, but they said, “Why? You are like us.” So, we did not step onto the stage as actors but as objects among objects.

Provocative and seductive, for contemplation and reflection, our author's body revealed itself to us and the eyes of the audience. Puppet body, furniture body. Placed body, exposed body. Body as ground for inscription, body as reason for inspiration.

Fundamental in those years was the relationship with childhood, not only in children’s theater. For us, the child was not just an audience member but also a travel companion to reflect on theater.

Their perplexities, their insights, and their thousand skills nourished our poetics. From them, we conceived our works; to them, we returned to receive their refined and stern judgment. In any case, the author they returned to us was bare.

We owe infinite aesthetic choices to the child's wisdom: from the abolition of “the theater’s fourth wall” to anti-intellectualism, from attention to form to a dramaturgy always between fiction and reality.

Theater beyond theater

2007
Debut of the show Baba
BaBa at the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon


2008

Obraztsov in Bochum, Moscow, Saint Petersburg


2009

BaBa in Romania,
Con gli occhi di Pinocchio at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels


2010

BaBa at MADRE in Naples; BaBa in Finland, Germany, Canada, and Portugal  Canada e Portogallo 


2011

BaBa, at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Rivoli; Madrid; Vienna


2012

BaBain Hasselt, Belgium
Io, diversa, at the Festival Météores in Brussels 
Performance visits at the Centro Luigi Pecci in Prato
Performance visits at the Museo Stibbert in Florence
Performance visits at the Museo Marino Marini in Florence
Performance visits at the SMS Santa Maria della Scala in Siena
Performance visits at the Archaeological Museum Artimino


2013

Debut of the show Umami in Marseille, European Capital
of Culture 2013

2014
Collaboration with the Accademia della Crusca for the Festival
Dante 2021


2015

Ritagli at the International Festival in Brussels  
Ritagli at the Festivaletteratura in Mantova  

2016
Performance visits to the De Chirico in Ferrara exhibition

2017
Creation of the show Scientifico! 
Ritagli at the Biennale Internationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Paris
di Parigi 
Ritagli at the International Bim Bam Festival in Salzburg

2018
Ritagli in Jaipur and Kolkata  
Ritagli at the WEEFESTIVAL in Toronto (CA)

2019
Performance visit at the Museo Casa Siviero in Florence  
Debut of the show Calderone immaginario at Le Pôle in
Le Revest-les-Eaux, in collaboration with the Musée d’Art de Toulon

2023
The Institute for Puppetry Arts and Popular Theatre in Grugliasco
hosts Figuriamoci

The economic crisis of 2007 was also the crisis of our theater: shorter tours, smaller productions, and reduced opportunities for expression. We no longer had the space we once did. And so, space became our problem: What could the author do outside of the theater?
They could listen to other spaces, as they had listened to puppets, objects, and children.

Thus began our para-theatrical forays into non-theatrical spaces: museums, monuments, homes, and cities. In these places, however, we did not bring our dramaturgy. On the contrary, the places brought theirs, helping us to rethink our condition as authors.

This is how we discovered ourselves as visitors. As such, we loved to present ourselves to our audience. We were visitors among visitors who, together with them, observed, showed, discovered and questioned, offering many points of view.

Our theater had always been militant, but the years of this “theater beyond theater” showed its necessity more than ever. We did not want to stop, nor were we interested in resisting, because the insatiable curiosity of our audience, which never ceased to surprise us, suggested one thing only: to insist.

And so we insisted.

An ongoing dialogue

More than forty years after the birth of the Piccoli Principi, we find that throughout our activity, we have never pledged fidelity to genres, bent to clients' expectations, nor ever pleased our audience.
Ours has not been a search for consensus but for confrontation, to steal, rework, and return the author’s viewpoint to a permanently open dialogue with the audience.
Therefore, we must continue to ask ourselves: what can authorial theater do today?