Playwright: Roberto Scarpetti
Partner: PAV
Twinned playwright: Elise Wilk
Co-funded by the European Union
Duration: 6 days
Participants: 6 young playwrights from Italy and Romania and a group of 10 young actors and actresses from the school of Teatro di Roma
Location: Teatro India – Teatro di Roma
Time: 28th October – 2nd November 2024
Group mobility: Italian playwrights from 27-29 November 2024 at the University of Arts Târgu-Mureș (Romania)
In 1991, the Romanian community in Italy numbered around 10,000 people. Today, it has grown to over one million, making it the largest foreign community in the country. The majority of its members are women who have come to Italy to work as caretakers, often leaving their families behind in Romania.
At the same time, there is a small Italian minority living in Romania, consisting of around 3,000 people, alongside another 20,000 Italians who have moved there for business, many of whom reside permanently in the country.
A-Broad is a workshop for young playwrights designed to develop a collective play that explores the lives of Romanian women working in Italy and Italians working in Romania—their sacrifices, their families, and their lives divided between the two countries. Led by Elise Wilk and Roberto Scarpetti, the workshop invites three young Romanian playwrights and three Italians to participate. Its first part will take place in Rome from October 28th to November 2nd, while the second part will be held in Târgu Mureș from November 25th to 29th.
During the first week, the six playwrights, together with the actors from the School of Teatro di Roma, will analyze, discuss, and study the workshop’s themes. From there, each participant will develop ideas for a short play, focusing on different perceptions of a plot or story to incorporate multiple perspectives. Between the two sessions, participants will have three weeks to work on their six short plays, which will be presented in a public reading in both Rome and Târgu Mureș in 2025.
The three Italian texts produced were “Qualcosa a riguardo” by Yuri Casagrande Conti, “Paloma” by Denise Diaz Montalvo, and “Mary Celeste” by Tatjana Motta. A public reading of these texts was organized on 15 June 2025 at Teatro Torlonia in Rome.
