The Donizetti Theater Foundation’s Altri Percorsi review concludes with a show that directly relates to the environmental issues of our time, particularly those caused by the largest steel mill in Europe and Italy: Ilva Football Club. Scheduled for Thursday, March 26, at the Teatro Sociale, in a double repetition, matinee at 10:30 a.m. and evening at 8:30 p.m., the show, winner of the Cura 2022 Call for Proposals, is inspired by the novel of the same name by Fulvio Colucci and Lorenzo D’Alò and is brought to the stage by the Usine Baug & Fratelli Maniglio collective, who directed and dramaturgically curated the play. Performers: Fabio Maniglio, Luca Maniglio, Ermanno Pingitore, Stefano Rocco and Claudia Russo.

The story of the former Ilva, the city of Taranto and its inhabitants is told by interweaving two narrative tracks that will turn out to be connected. The narrative is led by a sports program presenter who, breaking down the fourth wall, between anecdotes and commentary, tells the story of the fictitious Sidercalcio, aka Ilva Football Club: a small team composed of workers that, partly by luck, partly by talent and tenacity, surprises the whole country by making its way among the biggest professional teams, until it reaches the final of the Coppa Italia. A dream that slowly collides with reality, crumbles, bringing us into the drama of the second narrative track. Interwoven with the football narrative are monologues and choral moments that make up another, more intimate story, the story of “an Ilva family” born and raised at the foot of the monster, one of the many affected by the monster. This story encapsulates the lives of many families in Taranto and at the same time the lives of many families in other expendable cities, cities that have existed or may exist 100 years from now. Cities with other monsters, producers of other things and generators of other evils that will allow us to continue to consume beyond our limits. Finally, the two narrative planes rejoin to reveal the true interlocutor of the football narrative and the true nature of the Ilva Football Club legend: this will turn out to be an invention, a pantomime staged in a hospital room, a bedtime story to be told to a child, who has closed his eyes and it is not known if he will open them again.

Usine Baug is a theater company born in 2018 from the artistic meeting of Ermanno Pingitore, Stefano Rocco, Claudia Russo and Emanuele Cavalcanti, the group’s light designer and audio technician. In 2022, the company expanded by starting a collaboration with theater organizer Anita Beretta. The artistic creation of the group happens collectively and develops without establishing fixed roles but enhancing the skills and sensibility of the individual, who actively contributes to the whole creative process thus making it richer and more layered. Usine Baug converges prose theater, movement, storytelling and visual theater to address current political and social issues with lightness and irony. In 2019 Usine Baug makes it to the finals of the “Premio Scenario” with the show Calcinacci and in 2020 it also makes it to the finals of the “Premio Scenario per l’Infanzia” with the show Sweet Haka, a mention In-box Verde in 2022. In 2021 the company wins the “Premio Scenario Periferie” with Topi and, again in the context of the Premio Scenario, the show also wins the Premio della Giuria Ombra and the Premio dell’Osservatorio Critico Studentesco; in 2022 it becomes a co-production of Campo Teatrale, Milan, and is sponsored by Amnesty International. In 2023 the company wins with the children’s project Cantieri Nuove Storie the Smart and Fondazione Cariplo’s call for proposals “Life is Live.” In 2022, a collaboration begins with the Maniglio Brothers for the Ilva Football Club project, a Campo Teatrale production and winner of the Cura 2022 Call for Proposals. The twins, Fabio and Luca, graduated from the Bologna “A. G. Garrone” School of Theater (2017), and later from the Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris (2019).

By virtue of its themes, Ilva Football Club is at the center of one of the main educational paths of Il Cantiere del Teatro, the Donizetti Theatre Foundation’s project, linked to the Prose Season and Other Paths, aimed at involving students. Specifically, the show provides an opportunity to raise awareness of social and environmental issues among young people.