Polverigi and its festival was an important part of the landscape of the alternative theatre scene in the 1980/90s. I first came here in 1982 with Graeme Miller my colleague from Impact Theatre Cooperative to meet with Velia Papa and Roberto Cimetta from Inteatro with a view to setting up a co production (what was to be Impact's show A Place in Europe) and while here saw amongst other things one of the very earliest (maybe the first) show by Societas Raffaello Sanzio. Over the years I came back 4 times to the festival with different shows. While here I saw work by all kinds of people who played in the various spaces around the village. Spalding Gray, Jan Fabre, Squat theatre, Theodora Skipitares, Mike Figgis, almost everybody who made significant work on anything except the largest scale seemed to end up some how performing here. It was also a great place to network with venue directors, I usually met up here with John Ashford, then director of the ICA and later the Place theatre, but mainly I remember the Dutch and Belgium contingent, people like Ritsaart ten Cate, Rudy Engelander and Bob Danzig.
I also remember rather boorishly flirting with a young Cambridge undergraduate student, here with her, I thought, rather boring boyfriend. I had no idea of her name or what happened to her until years later I bumped into her at the RSC. It was Katie Mitchell. The festival has changed a lot over the years. There is no longer the money available to run something on its former scale, but as an organisation Inteatro is still active and actively looking for a significant role to play in contemporary performance.This is the second year that the MAPDP course from Central Saint Martin's has been in residence here (last year it was under the direction of Geraldine Pilgrim) its a great place to come and make work, and hopefully we'll be back.
Inteatro still have an original poster up from this performance
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