Mysteries & Drolls

M&D intends to launch a co-operation in a EU intercultural dimension, on the forms and languages of Mystery Play, Jester arts, Popular Drama, Drolls and Farce, as real key elements in the strategies for development of Performing Arts and Audience. As proved in the Theatre of Dario Fo, these forms can today give an unique contribution to the strengthening of EU identity of Theatre, which just in the rapport between Sacred and Profane, Popular and Cultured can be adequately fed.The Street Performing Arts represent today the need to reassign the Theatre to the Square, in its ritual dimension, as expression of the “social-man”, as a way to challenge the power (buffoon) and relate to the transcendent (mystery). In this sense, the project will allow to Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Music, to recover their own place in social life, and to give back to Spectator an active role in the show.The hub on which the M&D cooperation is developed, draws on the Spanish Misterios, Auto Sacramentales, German Fastnachtspiele, Mystery Plays, Commedia dell’Arte and finally to the Polish religious Theatre.Historical and artistic research, as well as EU co-production projects high-level trainings, are scheduled in M&D. They will involve historians, companies and theatre centres in ES, PL and DE. Creative staffs of partners will be invited to share, with other EU artists, their own cultural identities.An M&D Festival will be hosted in Italy and Northern Ireland for 3 years, in the context of 2 of the most important EU Street Arts events: Mercantia in Certaldo and Festival of Fools in Belfast.Project will go on to create a EU market for Popular Theatre, by organizing an itinerant EU Showcase (2019 in Certaldo, 2020 in Belfast) that can be a meeting point between artists and programmers.Such an ambitious activity plan will be made possible thanks to the great expertise and strong backgrounds of partners involved, key centres for the theatre sectors which are object of the cooperation.