Nell’Oltrepò Mantovano – Sulle orme di A. Mondadori

Nell’Oltrepò Mantovano – Sulle orme di Arnoldo Mondadori is a project to promote reading and theater that Teatro Magro is implementing in collaboration with the Oltrepò Mantovano Consortium, the Mantova Library Network, and Charta Cooperativa Sociale. The project will run in 2026–2027 and is born from the desire to strengthen the connection between artistic practices, cultural heritage, and local communities, placing reading at the center as a living, shared, and accessible experience.

For Teatro Magro, the project represents a natural continuation of a multi-year program of work on reading pedagogy, the dramatization of written texts, and the intersection of theater, school, and libraries. Operating in the Oltrepò Mantovano area means engaging with a broad and widespread territory, crisscrossed by strong local identities and a rich cultural tradition, but also by a concrete need for opportunities to participate and access culture, especially for children, young people, and families.

Within the project, Teatro Magro contributes artistic actions designed to transform books into theatrical experiences and theatre into a tool for approaching reading. The shows “A menadito” and “6”, inspired by Italo Calvino’s Lezioni americane, bring literature to the stage in a participatory and non-didactic form, inviting the audience to enter the text, to explore it, to be guided by listening and imagination. The theatre thus becomes a space of discovery, wonder and relationship with the written word.

Alongside the shows, the project activates performative installations and actions spread throughout the area, such as Cabine telefoniche letterarie (literary telephone booths), which offer moments of intimate and unexpected listening, and routes inspired by cultural geocaching, which connect places, objects, stories and people. These actions allow us to encounter reading outside of traditional contexts, creating memorable and inclusive experiences, capable of engaging audiences of different ages and cultural habits.

Another area of intervention concerns dialogue with the documentary and archival heritage of the Oltrepò Mantovano, in particular with the collection linked to the figure of Arnoldo Mondadori. Through storytelling, presentation, and reinterpretation of documents, Teatro Magro helps make a heritage often perceived as distant accessible and meaningful, transforming it into living matter, capable of speaking to the present and the communities that inhabit the area.

The project pays particular attention to young people, involving schools, libraries, and families in journeys that transform boys and girls from simple users to creators of cultural content. The creation of small works, artifacts, and artistic traces scattered throughout the area stimulates creativity, a sense of belonging, and the construction of a shared memory, strengthening the connection between education, art, and the territory.

For Teatro Magro Nell’Oltrepò Mantovano – Sulle orme di Arnoldo Mondadori it is a project that combines artistic, educational and social dimensions. An action that considers theater not only as a place of representation, but as a practice capable of generating community, activating processes of inclusion, and valorizing culture as a common good. A journey that looks to the future, starting from the stories, books, and people who inhabit the Oltrepò Mantovano.