Tones Teatro Natura
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
While all the theaters in the world are locked down, a stone theater is born immersed in Nature, amongst the Italian Alps, a powerful challenge that the Tones on the Stones Foundation brings on, leveraging on the strength of its know-how in the design and production of events in quarries. Thanks to an environmental requalification, an exhausted quarry becomes a sustainable theater, destined to host innovative site-specific productions, environmental education projects and activities for Welfare.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
Tones on the Stones (TotS) is a spectacular artistic format that offers sitespecific and immersive shows in active quarries since 2007. After developing an internationally recognized and appreciated identity, mainly thanks to its Festival that welcomes thousands of spectators every year, in 2020 TotS creates a new direction by redesigning its future, despite the pandemy.
First, we adopted a sustainable management system obtaining the ISO20121 certification, then we settled in an abandoned quarry, doomed to become a landfill for stone processing waste, to create a permanent theater surrounded by nature.
In this former industrial site Tones Teatro Natura was born, as a space dedicated to innovation, performing arts, people's welfare, training and knowledge. Tones Teatro Natura is part of a larger ecosystem that focuses on culture and sustainability as the engine for the economic and social development of a land of great beauty, but at risk of cultural impoverishment and neglected by the new generations.
The territory of the Verbano-Cusio-Ossola (VCO) is strongly scarred by mining activity. Over the last fifteen years TotS has transformed these active sites by offering totally new ways of looking at these spaces, so valuable for the economy of the territory. Today we want to create a sustainable model of social, economic and cultural development that can contribute to the revitalization of the territory and stimulate a discussion on the future of exhausted quarries that are continuously increasing, and on the intangible heritage bond to stone processing.
With Tones on the Stones as the main driver, the project was conceived with an inclusive approach, involving either local businesses and activities and large brands that, through services and materials offered “in kind”, allow Tones Teatro Natura to position itself as a one-of-a-kind initiative in Europe.
Key objectives for sustainability
1. Self-Production of energy and with zero emissions, thanks to the installation of a photovoltaic system, built in partnership with both public and private entities.
2. Plastic free environment, with free drinkable water dispenser. Bottles and other disposable plastic materials are not sold at the theater bar.
3. Waste recycling that is monitored and weighed, joint with a broad communication for the engagement of the public aimed to reach the smallest amount of unsorted waste.
4. Eco-sustainable toilets with in-situ constructed phytodepuration system.
5. Partnerships with eco-sustainable material producers (Mater Bi) intended for bar service
6. Constantly revised ISO20121 certification management system for the assessment of the environmental impact of major shows.
7. Extensive use of recycled materials from the mining activity for the whole infrastructure, including stage, changing rooms, bar, ticket office, toilets, workshop area, production office.
8. The theater will also feature interchangeable infrastructures (for example the scenic tower which becomes a birdwatching station in everyday life).
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The project establishes itself as an architectural-landscape work, capable of setting up a new dialogue with the natural context and with the history of the place, allowing a narrative continuity that draws its roots from the past, handing down to future generations the possibility of continuing to populate these spaces, contributing to their transformation.
Enhancement of the landscape: the layout of the entire project is set on the geometric lines defined by the quarry, following the native morphology of the landscape.
Modular and flexible for different ways of use: the masterplan includes two stages, a ticket office, a refreshment area, a bar, and technical, workshop, training areas.
The architectural strategy is based on three fundamental principles: modularity - transparency - flexibility. These three aspects determine an approach in constant dialogue with the surrounding nature and with future users who will be able to shape the space according to their needs.
The construction process involves a stratification of three main components: a modular steel structure, modular cladding panels of local stones and prefabricated volumes like old industrial containers.
The area set up for events shows the distinctive features of the architectural typology of the theater, prefiguring a symmetrical compositional structure despite the irregularities presented by the walls of the quarry. The project develops around a central empty space, and the structures that will house the ancillary activities stand on the long sides of the quarry. It is a technological theater set up with the latest generation systems to host immersive shows and multimedia productions.
The setup is completed by a small educational park called Green Library, created through the planting of trees and plants that used to be the wealth of the area. The park is useful for schools, but also a place to spend time in the tradition of the ancient gardens.
Key objectives for inclusion
The young residents will be the first to benefit from a project that will give them the opportunity to reverse the course of demographic, social, cultural and economic impoverishment that we are witnessing in this peripheral mountain area.
Thanks to its geographical position, at the crossroads of all the Ossola valleys, the Theater is easy to be perceived as “the center" that offers the energies, dynamism and vision of a larger city, showing the identity of the territory in combination with the European excellences and Artistic talent that are the baseline of TotS Festival.
Green Sentinels: local volunteers, trained with free workshops, responsible for environmental education and storytelling towards the public and the maintenance of the quarry / theater. The group will also include young migrants whom TotS has been welcoming for years for the making of inclusive theater projects, engaging with them in the production phases of the Festivals. Evolution of the traditional volunteers of festivals and events, the Green Sentinels will take care of the site and will act as ambassadors of the Theater in Nature and of all the cultural, social and environmental values that the space promotes and disseminates. The Green Sentinels will also have the task of telling the public how the theater was born and evangelize about the "rules of conduct", enabling the best possible interaction of the public with the Theater. In this process, people will be guided to consider the theater, always open, as home, a precious place to be protected, without the need for gates and barriers.
Space created to ease the exchange between man and nature, with the desire to overcome the concept of sustainability which tends not to leave marks, but rather to create new signs / footprints that recapitalize the environmental heritage.
Results in relation to category
Tones Teatro Natura operates in a fragile territory: the resident population is decreasing and it is among the oldest in the world, only 8% of residents have a degree. Added to this is the loss of young people, who find work abroad or in large Italian cities and a more dynamic and stimulating environment. The pandemic has disruptive effect, alarming episodes have multiplied: fights between teenagers, assaults on adults, severe alcohol abuse and running away from home.
The morphology of the mountain landscape is marked by centuries of mining activity, which is why in 2007 Tones on the Stones was born, a festival that for 15 years has redeveloped the active quarries by proposing a traveling summer festival to return majestic, spectacular stone theaters to the public. In 2014, Nextones was born, designed for the under 35s and dedicated to contemporary performance languages, it is received with extreme coldness, but today after seven editions, it connects the territory with the creative innovations of the international scene thanks to a research program that hosts the most innovative productions.
TotS specializes in immersive settings: thanks to the imposing stone walls on which to project, innovative opera productions are set up capable of bringing an audience that in the last two years have entered the short list at Fedora Pize, the only Italian reality. It also offers a lot of inclusive theater with citizens and young migrants.
In 2020 Tones Teatro Natura was born as a participatory project, through inclusive processes and artistic residencies, self-construction workshops and design thinking, Tones Teatro Natura is a site-specific artistic center for immersive, technological shows that are usually found in metropolises, but which magically they find shape in a natural context of great beauty immersed in Nature. A project that does not forget the history and the immaterial culture of the territory but that looks to the future and to new form of inclusive creativity
How Citizens benefit
As the first steps of this challenging project, TotS in July 2020 created Before and After, inclusive event to study the approach and mission of Tones Teatro Natura.
Conceived in the middle of the pandemic, Before and After came to life through a residence-laboratory inside the quarry with a temporary community made up of artists, creatives, scholars and technicians, engaged in reflecting on the word "social" when the term was mostly used in the expression "social distancing".
In parallel with the reflective and performative path, a self-construction site has come to life to begin converting the industrial space of the disused quarry into a permanent Theater in Nature.
Twenty-seven young people were called to reflect and elaborate actions in working groups divided into areas: communication, production of events, architecture and self-construction. The participants chosen through a call came from the cultural sphere, event production, project curation, research and architecture.
Everyone, participants and inhabitants of the area, had the opportunity to feed on the stimuli made available by TotS and actively participate in the creation of a new space dedicated to culture within the disused quarry, a Theater for the Future.
In the background of the workshop, several questions: What is the meaning of inhabiting? Is it possible to build a new relationship between us and the natural environment? What is the way for a different concept of personal and collective well-being? The whole experience has been published as digital logbook (https://beforeandafter.nextones.eu/) which then became a documentary chosen by the TV channel Sky Arte.
Innovative character
Tones Teatro Natura is the first energy self-sufficient theater from renewable sources. Despite being an open-air theater, it has a state-of-the-art plant infrastructure, thanks to the valuable contribution of leading companies that have used the site as a case study.
Tones on the Stones features artistic formats recognized internationally for innovation and uniqueness, with a research program that hosts the most innovative productions in the field of electronic music, video mapping, AV / RV, sensor motion graphics, sensors for body-sound and body-image interaction, laser technologies etc. One example is Nextones.eu festival, event that welcomes thousands of young people from all over Italy and abroad, over five days of programming.
TotS in recent years has specialized in immersive shows: thanks to the massive stone walls used as projection surfaces, we can bring the viewer inside the show and not just in front of it. This production method is also applied in opera staging, positioning itself as one of the most innovative companies in the field of musical theater.
This is a program that we usually find in large metropolitan areas but which at Tones Teatro Natura lives in a unique and sustainable naturalistic context, to undermine the principles and methods of fruition of culture, proposing new models and new processes of artistic production.
Among the scheduled activities there are also many training activities, workshops, meetings and co-planning workshops for events for the technical professionals of the show who will be able to deal with a unique and complex stage environment.
