In San Severo, in the Foggia area, there is a place that has remained closed for years: shutters lowered, silence, dust… A newsstand like many others, which over time has become invisible. Then, suddenly, someone decided to reopen it. Not to sell newspapers, but to let people come in and watch a show. «Theatre is when one decides to watch and someone else decides to be watched», says Francesco Gravino, director and artistic director of the Foyer 97 company.
On the sidewalks
Foyer 97 has existed, in fact, since 1997. «We start from the sidewalks», says Gravino. «We have always operated in the area with a theater that went outside conventional spaces». Over the years, in fact, the company’s artists have brought shows everywhere: to the cemetery – with texts taken from the Spoon River Anthology – to the bell tower of a church – where the audience was accompanied to the top because “to judge history you have to look at it from above” – and even on trains. «Deconstructing a space also means bringing the public closer»explains the artistic director. And he adds: «If you propose Shakespeare in the theater, someone may think: “My goodness…”. But if you take it inside a fifteen meter high tower, the curiosity changes. And, in the meantime, you also brought Shakespeare to life!
A newsstand closed for five years
The newsstand in Via Tondi had been closed for some time, five or six years. A place that was once alive and much loved by the community. «I remember that as a child I always went there to buy stickers»continues Gravino. «Then, as an adult, with a passion for photography and collecting, I always returned to it. I chatted constantly with the newsagent. Like everyone else… He was a point of reference». Precisely for this reason, seeing it closed gave rise to a question in him: how to restore a function to that space? The answer was to transform it into «a sort of contemporary cultural garrison. Previously it represented the diffusion of news, of knowledge. Now this concept evolves: it’s no longer reading the stories, but experiencing them first hand».
The experiment
The project was born on March 27, on the occasion of World Theater Day, celebrated for over sixty years. But what was supposed to be a one-off event turned out to be a huge success. “We didn’t expect this response,” admits Gravino. «We are now working to restart programming. There are concrete problems to solve: electricity, space management in the warmer months… But we will move forward.”
Less than a meter
It is the smallest theater in the world. Space is minimal: six chairs, nothing else. An inevitable choice: «Obliged. It wasn’t possible more than that.” But it is precisely this limit that characterizes the experience. In traditional theatre, distance allows for a wider construction; Not here: «You have the actor less than a meter away. Even a sigh becomes legible: there is a different truth.”
Mostly adults in the audience. But what is most striking is the queue, with people waiting to enter a space that hosts only six spectators at a time. At the exit, a QR code collects the feedback: “I liked it”, “I was excited”, “fantastic experience”…
A format that can travel
The project will not remain isolated, it is already becoming a format: «They reported to us an abandoned newsstand in Testaccio, Rome. And colleagues from Massafra called us to replicate the experience. Furthermore, we are also thinking of bringing the project to festivals such as Santarcangelo or Todi…”. The connection with the territory remains central. The project was born in San Severo and Francesco Gravino links it to a choice: that of do not abandon your land.
