Bottegavaga was born in 2016, but its roots are far away.
Its founders VA nni, G igi and A lberta – hence the idea for our name – met in 1996, in Venice, at the beginning of their career as actors under the guidance of Maestro Virgilio Zernitz . After working in the same Company – L’isola Teatro – for four years between traditional theatre , research and children’s theatre , they continued to collaborate by creating events, shows, writing stories together.
In 2016 they decided to put their professional skills together again by creating Bottegavaga, a container space for different artistic languages , which brings together theatrical proposals, texts and music .
The collaboration with the actress Betty Andriolo, met in 2005, becomes increasingly close over time, so much so that she is now part of the Bottegavaga Board of Directors.
Over the years we have developed a poetics that is now the identifying feature of Bottegavaga: at the beginning we paid particular attention to the world of childhood, dedicating ourselves to the creation of shows and audio fairy tales for children . We then created shows for all ages, based on play and light-heartedness, where the fairy-tale becomes the protagonist. Every story we tell is a true “hero’s journey,” at the end of which both actors and audiences can come away changed.
All this has been possible thanks to many meetings with the masters who have contributed to forming our style and our artistic ideals, towards whom we are infinitely grateful:
- Giuseppe De Meo , who taught us that a theatrical show is the compromise between the director’s visions and the actors’ improvisations.
- Isabella Palumbo and Renato Gatto , who revealed to us that with our body and voice we can become anything we want.
- Sandra Mangini , with whom we began to practice a theatre with actors always in sight, unravelling one scene after another thanks to the continuous transformation of their bodies.
- Virgilio Zernitz , who introduced us to the rigor of the word: the cleanliness of intonation that becomes a musical score.
- Serena Sinigaglia , from whom we learned the continuity between training and editing work, the search for credibility and intensity.
- Ferruccio Soleri and Enrico Bonavera, thanks to whom we laid the foundations for our work on the masks of the Commedia dell’Arte and the possibility of being possessed by them.
- Sabine Uiz of the Via Rosse theatre company, the Brazilian company Lume and the Argentine company Periplo who made us understand the importance of the physical score as a means to fix and manifest the body’s energy.
We have always wanted to open up to different dimensions: in addition to tailor-made training activities also for foreigners and the use of English on stage, we have developed experiential tourism proposals through guided tours of historic Venetian buildings combined with shows or theater workshops.
But we also wanted to move along cross-border perspectives . Since 2019, our artistic journey has also landed in other countries, because our choice to work in Venice and its territory is constantly accompanied by an international openness .
Experiences abroad
- Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2019) : it was a fundamental stage in our journey, putting us in contact with directors and actors from all over the world and giving us proof of the consideration that is attributed to the Italian tradition of Commedia dell’Arte, when it combines with contemporary research.
Find out more: Our Edinburgh Fringe Festival - Camden Festival in London (2024) : a new opportunity to meet an ever-growing audience of all ages, to interact with university professors, journalists and theatre people of all nationalities.
Find out more: Bottegavaga at Camden Fringe Festival 2024
Enrollment in Bottegavaga
Bottegavaga is a Cultural Association and its proposals are for members. Membership is nominal and involves a membership fee of 25 euros. Download in PDF format the Bylaws Bottegavaga
