Architectural heritage for the scene. Renovation strategies:organizational models vs current production restrictions

Architecture and theatre are two art forms that can be measured through space and time, and architecture is a way create places suitable for theatre. The disruption of spatial rules that started in the first half of the 20th century was aimed at creating a new connection between actors and the audience, but it caused the loss of a bond between spaces and performances. New ideas about the audience’s point of view, the obligation to take an active and participatory role, the contamination of art forms and theories, culminating in the Manifesto of Ivrea (1967), created a set of experiences that were useful to reaffirm the theatre’s privileged role in everyday life, able to involve the whole community in a dynamic and emotional way. Performing Arts need a place where it is possible to host many genres, new stagings of the most recent drama works, a place where transformation can constantly affect the whole space and prove useful for actors: a space that is able to reinvent itself and re-design itself each time. This research confronted some emblematic cases chosen among the several theatre venues in Eastern Sicily and is aimed at: establishing rules to obtain a work-inprogress pathway, a long-term one as well as specific for each venue: this will help defining strategies for building and functional renovation; analysing technological innovations, distribution and production mechanisms within the field of theatre, as well as the present Italian norms about funding.