To celebrate the tricentenary of Carlo Goldoni’s birth, La Biennale and Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia have set up a campus for European and Mediterranean university, academy and high-school theatre students.

Spread over twelve themed days and divided into two modules – which the students can take separately or in tandem – the programme combines morning lectures and conversations with workshops and performances in the afternoon and evening. The daily themes – closely related to the performances on offer at the 39th International Theatre Festival – concern important aspects of Goldoni’s work, examined through contemporary viewpoints and innovative interpretations. Themes include soldiers and war, the family and society, Venice and Paris, theatre for music, autobiography in plays, Venetian comedy, the dimension of the exotic, the reform of theatre, novelesque theatre, and the relationship between Venetian and Neapolitan theatre. On the central day we will try to take stock of the presence and diffusion of Goldoni’s repertoire in Europe and the world today, beginning with the recent – though by now remote – Goldoni centenary of 1993.

For the entire duration of the Festival, some of the greatest Goldoni specialists, together with directors, playwrights and actors who are presenting their works in Venice, will reflect on their work and projects, aiming to reconsider the modernity of Goldoni’s theatre, its link with an individual reality, that of Venice, and its exposure to and curiosity about the world. Above all, they will also consider the significance of the project for reform and for a new theatre that occurred over two and a half centuries ago, through a poetics that is proposed as an action and performance and through a theatrical creation that aims to reflect on the present.

The Campus is partially financed by MURST PRIN 2004 «La tradizione del moderno: teatro e romanzo nei secoli XVII - XIX».

The Campus is divided into two modules as follows:

module I from 18th to 23rd July, module II from 24th to 29th July. Both modules foresee a morning session of lectures given by Italian and foreign university professors to all those registered and an afternoon-evening one including the activities and performances that each participant may select from the various Carnets offered.

All Campus activities are free of charge except for the Festival performances which cost € 3.00 each.

- Campus program and information (PDF file)

- Application form (to be sent by June 15)

For further information:
Tel. +39 041 5218775 - Fax +39 041 5218825
campusgoldoni@labiennale.org