Network & collaborations

Megera means to be a benevolent and beneficent Fury, more Eumenide than Erinys — though certainly furious about the way culture, and above all women’s culture, is, or rather is not, considered in Italy, with ever-shrinking investment and scant attention to innovative realities.
Megera APS also aspires to be as light as a butterfly, proposing actions of financial support for women working in any capacity in the fields of performance and literature: writers, scholars, booksellers, directors, actresses, dancers, associations promoting events connected to women’s culture, magazines and publishing houses attentive to it — through mechanisms less cumbersome than public calls, though rigorous in their requirements for the open submission of projects, first among them a detailed description and a precise budget.

SIAE

This year Short Theatre is also supported by SIAE, which backs the curatorial line dedicated to the authorship of women artists and directors: eight authors will be involved who make dramaturgical writing the heart of their artistic path, coming from different generations and languages: Mariangela Gualtieri, Erika Galli and Martina Ruggeri / Industria Indipendente, Sara Leghissa, Muna Mussie, Daria Deflorian, Giulia Crispiani and Giorgina Pi. A collaboration that strengthens Short Theatre’s capacity to offer space and visibility to Italian women authors, accompanying them not only in the presentation of their works but also in the processes that generate them, building a genuine path of research and production.

www.siae.it

ATCL – Associazione Teatrale fra i Comuni del Lazio

ATCL – Associazione Teatrale fra i Comuni del Lazio is the body for distribution, promotion and audience development, today a Multidisciplinary Circuit (theatre, dance, music) recognised by the MiC and by the Regione Lazio. For over 30 years ATCL has supported the diffusion of live performance across the whole region, in search of a cultural policy capable of overcoming the centripetal force of the Capital, through projects dedicated to small and large municipalities and opening onto a European perspective, in order to shape an idea of “other” regional “identity” in constant becoming.
In 2026, ATCL makes Spazio Rossellini available for a residency by choreographer Miranda Secondari.

www.atcllazio.it

 

Master Studi e Politiche di Genere di Roma Tre / Modulo Arti

The “Modulo Arti” of the Master Studi e Politiche di Genere at Università Roma Tre develops the theoretical tools to read contemporary aesthetics and languages of the body, of the live arts, of performance, through a feminist embrace of a thinking of practices; it works on the creation of a glossary of the present in order to build new grammars of the sensible and exercises in political imagination. To de-neutralise, de-universalise, de-colonise: the gaze, representations, narratives.
In the 2026 edition of Short Theatre, the collaboration is renewed and intensified within CLASSE, a nomadic device of thought that runs through the festival. The Modulo takes place in intensive form, as a theoretical and affective immersion in the festival’s programme, weaving together lessons, seminars, shared practices, shows, encounters and parties. This year’s edition is dedicated to militant research, to its porous and traversable spaces, and to the political urgencies that today interrogate the relationship between artistic practices, activism and transfeminist theory. A path that takes a position and questions the present, through bodies that resist and narratives that transform.

www.masterstudiepolitichedigenere.it

 

Centro Culturale kurdo Ararat

The Ararat centre was born in May 1999 in the spaces of the former veterinary building within the complex of the former Mattatoio in Testaccio. An abandoned building that became a space of welcome and hospitality for Kurdish asylum seekers, but also a cultural centre where Kurdish language, cuisine and culture are taught, and a point of reference for the city’s entire Kurdish community. Within it coexist living spaces, a tea room, a kitchen, a barber’s and a reading room for consulting publications on the Kurdish cause and watching the satellite channel Roj TV.
The chosen name, Ararat, evokes a plurality of symbols: the sacred mountain as a symbol of the Kurds and Armenians, peoples oppressed and dispersed by Turkish repression; the mount on which Noah’s biblical ark ran aground; and the first ship of Kurdish refugees to land in Italy in 1997. Also known as MeKeMè (MKM, or Mesopotamian Cultural Centre), Ararat is a bridge between East and West, run entirely through self-management and self-financing by its guests and volunteers, with the support of solidarity networks such as Villaggio Globale, Senzaconfine, Donne in nero and Un ponte per…
Ararat is a space in which to courageously cultivate one’s own culture and identity (however mutable and in continuous becoming), an activity that becomes fundamental in order not to feel completely lost after crossing the border of one’s country with the prospect of never returning, or of not being able to return for a very long time.

www.instagram.com/romaararat

 

P.A.C. (Performing Arts Contemporanee)

Short Theatre is part of the P.A.C. network, formed following collaborations between various cultural organisations that have been operating in the territory of Rome for several years, and active in particular in the design and delivery of activities within Estate Romana as well as in other Roman, national and international contexts, events and festivals. Artistic commitment, community involvement and an international outlook are PAC’s defining qualities.

www.pacnetwork.org

 

PROJECTS

 

DRIFT

 

Choreographic creation is a process. A winding path made of doubt, experimentation, failure, and discovery. A slow, precious, increasingly rare kind of time.
In a cultural sector where everything accelerates: schedules, expectations, production, … DRIFT makes it possible to slow down. We make a bet on the long game. The time of research.
DRIFT – Dance & Research In The Future Time is a four-year European cooperation project (2026–2029), funded by Creative Europe, coordinated by the Théâtre de Liège (Belgium) and 9 partner organisations spanning Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Tunisia, and Ukraine and three international associate partners in Japan, Brazil, and Mozambique.
Over four years, DRIFT will support 20 mid-career choreographers through a complete, integrated framework: funded research labs and residencies, international showcases, co-production support, and touring guarantees.
Not a prize. Not a competition. A sustained, collective journey.
The conviction underlying DRIFT’s core conviction is simple: the process is as important as the finished work. Research deserves dedicated funding. Doubt, experimentation, and iteration are legitimate artistic work and should be recognised and compensated as such.
Each choreographer receives dedicated support for their research phase and showcase, including an overall budget covering associated costs, as well as access to studios, mentors, and peer exchange across the network. The aim is not to deliver a finished piece on a deadline, but to explore, question, and take risks without pressure. At international showcases, artists present works in progress, inviting audiences and programmers into the creative process rather than only its final result.

www.driftdance.eu

 

BAR & CATERING

This year Alaska, which since 2020 has taken care of food and drink for the public, is joined by Cucina e Cultura and the Laboratorio di ristorazione Quarticciolo, who handle catering for the staff. The three organisations ensure a sustainable and high-quality conviviality for the festival, and share with ST26 a political and sensitive stance.

Alaska Since 2020 Alaska has run SHORT BAR, Short Theatre’s bar, accompanying the time before, after and between shows, during concerts and encounters. A way of inhabiting the festival space together.
Alaska is a small community committed to offering a quality food and wine service for artistic and cultural events, in close collaboration with Gargani Parioli, a delicatessen of excellence since 1956, its exclusive supplier.

Cucina e Cultura (www.cucinaecultura.com) is the first organic, eco-sustainable and fair-trade caterer in Rome. Its main activity is providing a catering service in Rome based exclusively on products from the organic, zero-kilometre and fair-trade supply chain. Its producers are known and tested within local G.A.S. networks. Another fundamental characteristic of their catering in Rome, a necessary consequence of the organic choice, is the seasonality of products.

The Laboratorio di ristorazione del Quarticciolo is a neighbourhood employment project born from and for women. It began as a cookery course and became a place of encounter and exchange of knowledge about the everyday life of each participant. It is a project in development, starting from the assumption that cooking is not a neutral practice that begins and ends at the stove. The aim is to create a place within the neighbourhood that is both encounter and organisation for its own people; that offers a working possibility in the local area, freeing up time from the excessive distances often required to reach a workplace, and freeing us from wages that are too low and from a practice that alienates us from the rest of life.