Teatro delle Ariette is the company of peasant actors, of theater to eat, of autobiography. In 1989 Paola Berselli and Stefano Pasquini left the theater and went to live on the farm called Le Ariette. After years of silence and work in the fields, in 1996 they founded the company with Maurizio Ferraresi. They built the Deposito Attrezzi, a rural building that became their theater headquarters. In 2000 at the Volterrateatro festival they debuted with the show “Teatro da mangiare?” and from there their adventure began.
Teatro delle Ariette is a cultural association that produces, studies, organizes and promotes theater. It was founded in 1996 and since then it has been performing in homes, in bakeries, in hospitals, in schools, on the streets, in squares, in fields but also in theaters and in important national and European theater festivals and reviews. Their shows have had more than 2500 performances at home, on the territory and on tour in Italy and Europe (Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal).
Their shows often deal with autobiographical themes of man’s relationship with raw materials, with animals, with other men and with the earth, they accept contradictions, question their own past and future, seeking a deep sharing between actors and spectators in the present moment. In these shows, in addition to thoughts and feelings, they handle rolling pins, flour, water, knives and plates, cheeses, carrots, eggs, animals, music of songs and sounds of tools, they talk about love, joy, life and death. The name of the Association comes from the name of the farm where it is based: Le Ariette (Castello di Serravalle, now Valsamoggia, in the province of Bologna), where since 1989 Paola Berselli and Stefano Pasquini (two of the founding members) have run the farm of the same name. In 1997, she created and implemented the project A teatro nelle case in Castello di Serravalle, which in the following years expanded to the municipalities of Bazzano and Monteveglio. In the summer of 1999, in the middle of the fields of Ariette, he built with his own hands, in total self-management and self-financing, the Deposito Attrezzi, a rural building for the theatre.
