Museum Theatre in Vercelli
CLIENT
Vercelli Museums • Piedmont Region
YEAR
2017
WHAT WE DID IN SHORT
* Historical and Educational Research
* Workshop creation and delivery
BRIEF
Vercelli is an often overlooked but culturally precious city of Piedmont, 60 km from Milan. It hosts many valuable monuments and museums. Straordinariamente ordinaria: la Vercelli che non ti immagini (Ordinary in an extraordinary way: the Vercelli you don’t expect) is a project funded by Compagnia di S.Paolo aimed at developing new ways of promoting the rich cultural heritage of Vercelli, in partnership with Museo Borgogna, Museo Leone, Museo del Tesoro del Duomo and Arcidiocesi di Vercelli.
OUR SOLUTION
InvisibleStudio, in partnership with Art in the City and Cooperativa Aurive, has designed an audience engagement project based on theatrical tours. As Catherine Hughes writes in her Museum Theatre book, drama can provoke the desire to learn and theatre can help to interpret the museum’s collections. Theatrical tours are becoming more and more frequent as a way to emotionally engage audiences who are more and more demanding and easily distracted. Our training project involves the delivery of three “design workshops” to teach students how to approach the design of a theatrical tour with the help of an actor from the celebrated Piccolo Teatro di Milano, one of the most important theatres in Europe, founded by Giorgio Strehler. After the workshops, three theatrical tours open to the public will be performed in three museums of Vercelli in front of local audiences and tourists alike.
SUCCESS
The workshop was immediately sold out with a long waiting list and extensive local media coverage.