The Teatro del Lemming was formed in Rovigo in 1987 from the meeting between the director and composer Massimo Munaro and the set designer and director Martino Ferrari. In the same year, he staged the show Frammenti and in the following year Sogno dentro Sogno, winner for the best incidental music of the Totola Prize in Verona (the jury was chaired by the director Gianfranco De Bosio). These shows combine, within original narrative structures, the purely evocative aspects consistent with theatrical language. The word has lost centrality, there is no text that precedes the staging: the visual element, the founding presence of music, the use of bodies in the stage space almost as if to draw mysterious hieroglyphics, everything contributes to constitute a work in which the signs already have the value of meaning.
\nIn 1989 the group created a Video Work, Il Paesaggio Mancante, which competed at the TTVV International Video Theatre Festival in Riccione. <\/p>\n
In 1990 he presented La Citt\u00e0 Chiusa, inspired by the work of Albert Camus, which won the Totola Prize for best theatrical direction in Verona (the jury was chaired by Giuseppe Liotta, professor of History of Theatre at the University of Bologna). After a long laboratory activity, between 1992 and 1993 he created the Studio d’Ambiente Una sola Moltitudine and the unfinished show Galileo. In October of the same year, in fact, while flying over an archaeological site in Isernia as a young researcher from the University of Ferrara, the group’s co-founder Martino Ferrari died. The Opera Prima Festival that Teatro del Lemming has been promoting in Rovigo since June 1994 will be dedicated to him. The Festival is the first to forcefully signal the new generational wave that has been forming in recent years within Italian theatre. As part of the Festival, Teatro del Lemming presents Cinque Sassi, from the collection of poems by Marco Munaro. The show is nominated as the best show of the year by the critic Franco Quadri at the 1994 Ubu Prize.
\nIn 1995 the group presents FAUST, a traveling show proposed among the urban spaces of a city. In 1996 is Il Galileo delle Api. The homonymous Video Opera competes for the Premio Italia promoted at the TTVV Festival in Riccione. In November of the same year, as part of the Ubu \u201896 Awards, for the activity of the Opera Prima Festival, it receives the Giuseppe Bartolucci Prize, dedicated to the memory of the famous critic.
\nSince 1997, continuously until today, the Teatro del Lemming has been recognized and funded by the Ministry of Culture through the FUS as a Production and Research Company.
\nIn 1997 he wrote EDIPO – A Tragedy of the Senses (which received seven nominations at the Ubu 97 Award), followed by DIONYSUS – Tragedy of the Theatre (1998), AMORE E PSICHE – a tale for two spectators (1999) and ODISSEO – Viaggio nel teatro (2000) and as a postface to this project A COLONO – rite of greeting for a single spectator (2001) and L’ODISSEA DEI BAMBINI – Viaggio nel teatro for twenty children of all ages (2003).
\nWith these works, a new phase is created for Lemming that has given rise to a Tetralogy on Myth and the spectator that projects the group towards an unprecedented and exciting research characterized by the direct, sensorial and dramaturgical involvement of the spectators. These shows are hosted by the most important Italian and European Festivals and Theaters, in particular in 2000 Lemming is called to represent the Italian theater at the Italian-French days held in Marseille and promoted by ETI and ONDA. In 2001 a monograph on the group is published, edited by Franco Vazzoler, professor of Italian theater literature at the University of Genoa, and Marco Berisso, entitled TEATRO DEL LEMMING published by the publishing house Zona of Genoa.
\nSince 2002 it has managed its own theater space in Rovigo called Spazio Lemming. In these years it has also carried out an original pedagogical activity on the actor, called I CINQUE SENSI DELL’ATTORE, extended – through the practice of the workshops – to the whole national territory.
\nIn January 2003, Roberto Domeneghetti, one of the main protagonists of the Lemming’s activity in these years, suddenly passed away after a short and violent illness. The group’s last production, after a gestation lasting four years, is dedicated to him: NEKYIA viaggio per mare di notte – Inferno Pugatorio Paradiso, a radical reinvention of Dante’s three canticles.
\nAt the same time, the group also created a new diptych IL ROVESCIO E IL DIRITTO: A PORTE CHIUSE\/IL SANGUE DEGLI ALTRI, a personal rewriting of French existentialist thought. With these works, a new phase of research opens for the Lemming, which from here rethinks the relationship between actors and spectators no longer in favor of the single participating spectator, but in the direction of a community, albeit restricted. The result of this research is ANTIGONE, a work that does not present limitations on spectators but does not renounce the practice of active involvement of spectators, which debuted at the BIENNALE TEATRO in Venice in March 2009. In January 2008, Lemming left the Spazio Lemming and took over the management of Teatro Studio from the Municipality of Rovigo. In September 2010, the company debuted with HAMLET, a personal rewriting of Shakespeare’s tragedy focused on the impotence of the individual in the face of the rottenness of the world. After participating in the GDANSK SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL in Poland in July 2012, the show won the SILVER SNOWFLAKE as best theatre show at the SARAJEVO WINTER FESTIVAL in 2013. In 2011, the Company created the project L’EDIPO DEI MILLE for the Municipality and the University C\u00e0 Foscari of Venice, on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Unification of Italy. A Garibaldian challenge launched to the theater system “because sometimes the action of a few men is able to produce, even through theater, great transformations”. Oedipus of the Thousand is a pedagogical-spectacular project that leads student actors divided into groups each led by an actor from the Company, to perform Oedipus for a spectator in multiple spaces at the same time in the same city. In the same year the debut of FRAMMENTI, a scenic concert that collects the words and music of twenty years of works, for once isolated in their pure evocative power.
\n2013 is the year of two new productions. GIULIETTA E ROMEO. LETTERS FROM THE LIQUID WORLD continues its research into Shakespearean dramas, in addition to staging an Opera on DREAM WITHIN A DREAM which, for the first time in the history of the Lemming, involves seven musicians and four singers, contrasting them on stage with seven actors. The chamber opera is produced in collaboration with the Conservatories of Rovigo and Castelfranco Veneto.
\nIn 2016 the Teatro del Lemming debuts with WS TEMPEST, the last part of the Shakespearean trilogy. The debut takes place in the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza hosted by the Festival Conversazioni del Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. In 2021, in productive collaboration with the Teatro Sociale in Rovigo, it creates a chamber opera entitled ANTE LUCEM on the seven romances of Alexander Block by Dimitri Shostakovich. In the same year Munaro publishes the monograph, for the types of Il Ponte del Sale, \u201cThe Tetralogy of the Lemming. The Myth and the Spectator\u201d. Since 2017, Teatro del Lemming has been working on research on Ovid’s METAMORPHOSIS. This research cycle includes METAMORPHOSIS of mutated forms, an adaptation of the work created during the health emergency of 2020, and NEL LABIRINTO DELLA MEMORIA (2022). Since 2023, it has been working on a triptych entitled Attorno a Troia. <\/p>\n