The Inclusive Community Theater project was born from the collaboration of three European organizations engaged in community theater and non-formal education: Rampa Prenestina, Shoshin Theatre, and Independent Theatre Hungary, operating respectively in Italy, Romania, and Hungary. The activities lasted a total of 15 months, from September 1st 2024, to December 1st 2025. The shared goal was to design an artistic space, capable of connecting young people from profoundly diverse backgrounds, fostering processes of self-expression, active participation, and personal growth through theater. This case study illustrates how, starting with an initial methodological meeting in Rome, the project expanded to streets, Roma camps, rehearsal rooms, international stages, and ultimately European festivals, transforming those who participated.
Two Roma theaters — the Independent Theater Hungary in Budapest, legally and fi nancially represented by the Women for the Future Association (hereinafter: ITH), and Rampa Prenestina in Rome (hereinafter: RP) — implemented an artistic program, in collaboration with Asociatia Teatrala Shoshin in Cluj-Napoca, in which the theater stepped out of traditional spaces and conventional artistic processes, creating performances through a community-based approach. The activities lasted a total of 15 months, from 1 September 2024 to 1 December 2025. What does this mean? There was no preconception, no pre-written play or text. Everything that we brought to the stage and everything we worked from arose from the creativity, knowledge, experience, and personal interests of the creators.
This booklet is aimed at artists, theatre and dance companies who wish to engage with rural and smaller communities through community theatre practices. It offers a practical guide on how to select a production that fits the local context, how a community theatre touring programme works, how to collaborate with local organisers and community partners, and what to consider when preparing and delivering a performance. Drawing on real-life experience, the booklet highlights the specific characteristics of community theatre work and the most common challenges encountered in the process.
The booklet is primarily dedicated to those artists or theatre and dance companies who are interested in joining the touring experience in the country. We offer a practical guide to help you select the most suitable show of your company for rural audiences, we explain how your show will get into the programme book, how to contact local promoters, how to promote your event - generally knowledge on how to prepare for the evening of the show and what are the potential pitfalls of the event.
This booklet is primarily dedicated to cultural entrepreneurs and associations who are interested in joining the experience of rural touring. The following is a practical guide that will help you to launch a touring agency and make it work successfully. We explain the specifics of village audiences and venues, how to choose the participating art companies, how to select local promoters and how to fund your project - to know, in general, how you can become a rural touring coordinator based on the British model (and beyond!) and what are the potential pitfalls of organising tours.
This booklet will be useful if you are a budding cultural promoter, an experienced promoter who wants to find out more, or if you simply want to organise an artistic event for rural audiences. In the following we will provide you with a practical guide to help you select the most suitable show for your community. We explain how you can get in touch with the art companies offering the shows, how to organise and promote the event, a general knowledge how to prepare for the evening of the show and what are the potential pitfalls of it. In short, this booklet has the capacity to make you a promoter of the arts in rural environments.
In this publication we intend to provide an anthology of the experiences that eight theatre groups have lived and realised together with the communities that welcomed the project. The pandemic opened up eight very different ways of approaching theatre work and crisis intervention on a social and cultural level; eight distinct ways that put the community at the centre of their theatre work where the cultural system is least present; generating strongly participatory, active and maieutic paths, with the aim of building a living relationship with citizens, and lasting over time. The project was able to intervene at various levels on the problem of identity, decidedly frayed in some contexts, strongly rooted in others. It has generated ‘places’ where human landscapes and social architecture seemed rather evanescent. Places of the gaze, places of sharing, places of study, places of memory, places of dreams, places of struggle, and places of encounter.
(RIOTE3)
The speciality of talking about theatre this time promises to be that, if you read this book, you will learn more about psychological and psychophysiological, anthropological, and related art theoretical fields of knowledge in relation to human performativity. If you are a theatre person, you may not have thought that these fields of knowledge play a role in your daily work, or if you did, you may not have known their interrelationships and science. If you come from the world of the humanities, you may have always thought that theatre, in its various forms, could be a subject for scientific study, but you may not have yet come across a study that summarises the relevant knowledge.
Why Don’t We Do It in the Road is a book for anyone: ... who enjoys creating outdoor theatre performances, ... who is interested in learning about it, ... who is interested in the mechanisms behind it, ... and for anyone who is ... well ... just generally interested in things. The book has emerged from personal experience of creating theatre in the streets, squares, parks, villages, buses, hospitals, churches and even mountains. Although a personal experience, it is one that is embedded in the firm belief that art should be created collectively.
– for European Cultural Agencies and Antrepreneurs in Hungary and Romania –
(RIOTE2)
The Rural Touring Handbook has been produced as part of the RIOTE (Rural Inclusive Outdoor Theatre Education) project and has been designed to help support the development of sustainable rural touring within Europe. It provides a background to the successful rural touring sector in England and will act as a useful practical guide for three of our RIOTE partners; Shoshin Theatre in Romania, Control and Utca-Szak in Hungary, to investigate the possibility of starting similar initiatives in their respective countries. The Handbook offers advice and information to those who might wish to create a ‘pilot’ rural touring network in their area. It also includes tips on how to support volunteers in rural communities to promote professional touring shows and how to advise theatre companies on what to expect when performing in non-dedicated arts spaces.
