BeyondBorders: Beyond the limits of the pre-pandemic theater
by Vincenzo Sansone
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted society, leading to temporary closures that, in many cases, became permanent for various businesses and cultural activities. Among these, performing arts—which depend on in-person gatherings for creation and especially for audience engagement—faced a significant impact. In Italy, performing arts venues remained closed almost continuously from March 2020 until April 2021, with limited summer reopenings under strict regulations aimed at preventing contagion. Globally, the situation fared no better, with seasons suspended, rescheduled, or postponed, often to the following year with lingering uncertainty. Numerous, often uninspiring attempts emerged from the live performance sector to sustain their work. Among the most common were online theater seasons, featuring past performances uploaded to video platforms, available either indefinitely or at specific times to simulate a “live” theater experience. While providing an emergency service, these efforts did not provide any innovation. However, some theater projects developed during the pandemic took a more creative and constructive approach, finding ways to produce and experience performances despite the various shutdowns.
One such initiative exploring “experimental production modes” is Beyond Borders, an artistic creation and experimentation project by the company Instabili Vaganti, in collaboration with L’arboreto – Teatro Dimora, La Mama Umbria, ATER Foundation, and several international partners. Its goal is to transcend local limitations, including pandemic restrictions, and expand artistic production globally. This is achieved through a blend of in-person and remote creation methods that, amid the challenges of the pandemic, have shown how obstacles can yield positive outcomes when transformed into opportunities.
The company summarizes the project’s concept and goals as follows: “Unable to move physically or reach our audience, we decided to express our thoughts through visual notes. We continued fostering intercultural exchanges by involving international artists in the creative process to embark on an exciting journey together in search of the ideal Polis.” The project set out to transcend boundaries—not only geographic but also stylistic, genre-based, and conceptual—by integrating every phase of the creative and audience engagement process into its definition, capturing fleeting moments savored intensely in isolation or restrictive situations. This approach has provided answers to some of the countless questions that have occupied our minds—or, at least, has led us to ask new questions.
During the 2020 lockdown months, Beyond Borders sparked a profound remote dialogue among international artists, aiming not to halt creative and production processes entirely but to generate a project born from the pandemic’s imposed physical limits yet open to boundless creative possibilities. In September 2020, the project debuted at the Oratorio San Filippo Neri in Bologna with Lockdown Memory – Phase 1, one of the first in-person openings following the toughest phase of the pandemic lockdowns. Here, video testimonies from the lockdown complemented live performances, creating a new awareness of the body that engaged with the video presence in a transformed state, shaped by months of inactivity. Lockdown Memory evolved into a full-fledged performance, reaching audiences in countries like Chile and the United States. “Does theater still have meaning today?”
This question begins a journey through the memory of those months confined indoors, reliant on online connections. Theater resonates because it mirrors life, comprising encounters and exchanges. Given how vital these interactions are, it’s unsurprising that theater regained significance by highlighting the value of sharing space and time, fundamental to existence itself. Such an actor-audience connection, reminiscent of Grotowski, is the basis from which theater must restart.
A principle guiding Beyond Borders, which, after online beginnings, draws in audiences to witness lockdown memories and a restart rooted in physical gatherings. This return does not discredit but rather embraces the virtual experiences enabled by theater, integrating them as new elements of live performance. Nicola Pianzola remarks, “For us, theater only makes sense if it can connect people worldwide and create a global community.” Anna Dora Dorno adds, “Theater for us only makes sense if it allows us to ‘transcend boundaries’.”
On stage, Instabili Vaganti appears with artists from around the world via video: South Korea, Brazil, the USA, India, Colombia, Mexico, Iran, Pakistan. Numerous steps have defined the Beyond Borders project from 2021 to 2022, producing live performances as well as video-based productions adhering to the project’s core principle: a harmonious integration of in-person and online activities. Within this confluence of experiences emerged the web series VIDEODANTE, developed through collaborations between Instabili Vaganti and international artists to explore connections between Dante’s work and the cultures of participating artists, as seen in VIDEODANTE #Indonesia (2021), VIDEODANTE #India (2021), and VIDEODANTE #Chile (2022).
After traveling to countries like Chile, Senegal, Tunisia, and the United States, the final stages of Beyond Borders took place in Italy, specifically Mondaino (RN), Scansano (GR), and Bologna, aiming to spread domestically what had been achieved abroad and to engage other artists and scholars in the project.
During the Mondaino step, held July 23rd-29th, 2022, a co-creation process involving six artists from international stages culminated in the first presentation of In viaggio verso Eutopia. This debut engaged with various mentors (Anna Maria Monteverdi, Simona Frigerio, Francesca Giuliani), providing fresh perspectives that offered feedback and suggestions on the work.
The final presentation took place on August 8, 2022, premiering at the Teatro nel Bicchiere festival, directed by Anna Dora Dorno, with a script by Nicola Pianzola and Jordi Pérez i Soldevila (Spain), music by Riccardo Nanni, and performances by Nicola Pianzola, Cecilia Seaward (USA), Yuki Kawahisa (Japan), Samba Thiame, Abdoulaye Ndiaye (Senegal), and Efi Kitsanta (Greece).
Eutopia is a direct descendant of the Beyond Borders concept born in lockdown, offering artists an ideal and real space to cultivate a new vision of theater—one that fosters global artistic collaboration, not only for artistic expression but also for the theater’s transformation into a space for ideas, local and global, for creators, cultural institutions, and audiences, who actively participate through thought. Eutopia represents the other side of Lockdown Memory, where the faces once seen on screen come to life before audiences, marking a clear restart distinct from
pre-pandemic theater and embracing the pandemic’s impact on the theater sector to propose alternative visions for live performance.
Author Biography
Vincenzo Sansone is currently a Full Professor of Theater History at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo, with adjunct positions at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brera and the University of Milan. He holds a Master’s in Theories and Techniques of Digital Performance from Sapienza University of Rome and a Ph.D. in European Cultural Studies from the University of Palermo. He has been a visiting researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Also an actor, digital set designer, visual designer, and visual artist, his research focuses on performing arts, new media, animation, AR technologies, software culture, visual culture, and artificial intelligence. His first monograph, Digital Scenography and Interactivity: The New Theater Projection Mapping Machine, was published in 2021 by Aracne Editrice.