The Project
Free man walking – theatre as a tool for detainees’ integration is a European Project that has Teatro dei Venti as leader partner and aufBruch (Germany), Fundacja Jubilo (Poland) and UPSDA (Bulgaria) as partners. The four organizations share the problems and needs related to the art of practising theatre in prison with prisoners and aim to improve the effectiveness, feasibility and sustainability of theatre work in prisons, as a means of social and personal rehabilitation for detainees.
The project is co-founded by Creative Europe.
General objectives of the project
The general objective of the project is to strengthen and improve the capacities of all those cultural operators who perform theatre activities in prison, and of all those social operators who organize and provide these activities. The strengthening of competences will in particular go through learning and the exchange of knowledge.
The project involves some exchange and training activities, that directly involve four categories of different target group (theatre and social operators/directors, actors-inmates, workers in training, active public/citizenship) and implement the creation but also production and circulation of theatrical performances with a common theme.
The project aims to:
1. strengthening of theatre activities in prison;
2. training of artistic-social operators;
3. audience development;
4. creation and sharing of good practices at European level.
The project aims at the presentation of four performances (one for each partner) constructed and designed starting from the common theme that each artistic director will develop following his own sensitivity and the particularities related to his own work in prisons. Each partner will selects a group of participating inmates and four workshops will be organized for each partner, a total of sixteen workshops, aimed at preparing the final performance.
The relationship between fathers and sons, the inheritance, the transmission of knowledge and emotions between generations will be the common theme from which a draft of script will be prepared. The relationship between fathers and children belongs to every culture and accompanies every human being for his entire life.
Training for theatre operators
The project, that will lead to the realization of the four performances, has not as sole purpose the construction and staging of four shows: Freeway Project wants to take care of an approach and training program for theatre operators (selected through a public call).
The general objective of the project is to strengthen and improve through learning and through the exchange of knowledge the capacities of all those cultural operators who perform and realize theatre activities in prison.
The workshop for theatre operators consist of two different steps: a first part of training with directors and a second part of work in prison with actors-inmates.
Audience development
To tell the artistic process and the concrete results of the project from a privileged point of view a group of active spectators will follow the work of each partner, by becoming witnesses narrators of the experience.
At the beginning of the project, the partners will draw up a program with common guidelines, then each will develop the path adapting it to the peculiarities of its own cultural environment.
The group of spectators will follow all the steps of the creation and realization of the show and will be an integral part of returning the contents to the public, activating a sharing platform with the other groups of spectators from the countries involved and taking care of the transmission through the entire social network experience.