COLLABORATIONS
Mattatoio di Roma / Azienda Speciale Palaexpo
In continuity with recent years, Short Theatre and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo / Mattatoio di Roma – one of the festival’s principal supporters as well as a project partner – are sustaining a collaboration that proceeds in the spirit of co-habitation, experimentation and shared planning.
The Mattatoio, and in particular the Pelanda pavilion, has been the beating heart of Short Theatre since 2010, welcoming each year artistic visions, transdisciplinary practices and new forms of relation with the city.
In 2025, the Pelanda pavilion hosts the first eight days of the programme, confirming itself as the festival’s true home. Alongside the performances and artistic activities, these spaces also host children’s workshops – conceived as an initial gesture towards involving young audiences in the languages and themes of the festival – in collaboration with the Laboratorio d’Arte di Palazzo Esposizioni and Fatatrac edizioni.
Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale
The collaboration between Teatro di Roma and Short Theatre lies at the very origins of the festival, which was founded in 2006 in the spaces of Teatro India as a theatre showcase dedicated to short and experimental formats. In the spirit of research into the contemporary, support for Rome’s artistic scene and its internationalisation, and the fostering of encounter between the city’s artistic generations, Teatro di Roma supports the festival’s activity, helping to offer the city a layered and articulated artistic proposition.
In 2025, Teatro India reaffirms itself as a living laboratory of the contemporary scene, where long-term projects, attentive process work and radical imagination interweave. Thanks to the support of Teatro di Roma, the space also hosts research practices and creative processes that open to the public, as in the case of Giulia Scotti, Fabritia D’Intino and Marta Olivieri.
The spaces of Teatro India are animated further through collaboration with Da.Re. Dance Research and the Playground for New Voices project. Through the former, Short Theatre 2025 hosts the residency of Leo Schifino, Manuela Cirfera and Enrico Frisoni with Davide Uccellari and Filippo Lilli; through the latter, Frani Dibiase and Roberto Leandro Pau continue their research by opening it to the public in a dedicated moment.
Palazzo dei Congressi / EUR Spa
On 13 and 14 September, thanks to the support of EUR SpA, Short Theatre will move from the historic spaces of the Mattatoio towards the EUR district and into the Palazzo dei Congressi. Through a bold, unprecedented and sweeping artistic gesture, the festival will contribute to rethinking the architecture of this iconic rationalist building through the expressive, evocative and imaginative forms of the performing arts.
The spaces of the Palazzo dei Congressi allow Short Theatre to open up new possibilities for expressive articulation. The presence of large, contiguous empty spaces and the building’s architectural elements make possible the experimentation of different formats. Moving within spaces so different from those canonically associated with live performance also opens onto a greater mingling of languages, from music to the visual arts, from dance and performance to public programming and clubbing.
Crossing Short Theatre @Palazzo dei Congressi: Alessandro Sciarroni, Alexia Sarantopoulou, Antonella Bertoni, Bunny Dakota, DOM-, Cristina Kristal Rizzo, Daria Deflorian, Elena Antoniou, Fabrizio Favale, Federica Giardini, Fulu Miziki, Hugo Sanchez, Jari Boldrini, Laura Scarpini, Martina Rota, Rebecca Solari, Roberto Esposito, PIOGGIA / Grøenlandia, Tania Garriba, Valeria Golino, Vincent Giampino.
www.eurspa.it/it/polo-congressuale/il-palazzo-dei-congressi
ORBITA | Spellbound Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza
ORBITA | Spellbound Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza is a creative hub dedicated to the dissemination and support of contemporary choreography, through activity spread across the Roman territory and a constant attention to research, the hybridisation of languages and audience engagement.
The collaboration with Short Theatre takes the form of hosting, at the Teatro Biblioteca Quarticciolo, the final research phases of two artistic projects and their first public openings: Gherminella by Miranda Secondari (1–4 September, public meeting on 4 September) and L’avvenire by Silvia Rampelli / Habillé d’eau (6–8 September). Two different trajectories, united by a radical attention to the body and to composition, which find in the Quarticciolo space a place for listening, deepening and sharing.
MAGLIANO
Magliano is one of the most visionary Italian brands in contemporary fashion. Founded by Luca Magliano, the label moves between queer desire, aesthetic radicality and affective tension, building collections that speak of hybrid identities, non-conforming bodies and new forms of belonging.
The collaboration with Short Theatre is born from a deep affinity: a shared lateral gaze upon the world, the will to generate new imaginaries and the urgency of inhabiting the present with poetic and political gestures. For the festival’s twentieth edition, Magliano co-produces a limited-edition capsule collection – garments and objects that draw on the original illustrations of Noura Tafeche, the visual artist behind the guiding image of ST25. Her hand-drawn figures, sourced from the web and poetically reworked, now inhabit fabric and become part of a layered, collective narrative.
A collaboration that fuses fashion and the performing arts, critical thought and visual language, in a shared attempt to interrogate dominant codes and restore space to the sensible, the marginal, the possible.
Fondazione Alta Mane Italia
Fondazione Alta Mane Italia supports projects aimed at improving the living conditions and wellbeing of people – with particular attention to children and young people – who find themselves in situations of extreme social marginalisation or psycho-physical distress, through pathways of support connected to artistic experience, directed towards their psycho-physical recovery and social integration. For more than ten years, AMI has supported artistic pathways involving children and young people in situations of hardship or social marginalisation aimed at psycho-physical recovery and social integration (SOC), or affected by illness (OSP). We also consider it fundamental to complement artistic pathways with research activities (RIC) and awareness-raising (SENS), in order to promote the application of good practices, facilitate the prospects of future sustainability for our partners and raise awareness around these issues.
Beyond artistic workshops, research and awareness events, AMI promotes what we call exchanges – meetings of experience between partners who operate in similar ways across different socio-economic and cultural contexts (INT).
NERO Editions
NERO Editions is a publishing house and creative agency that promotes, across a range of contexts and formats, contemporary languages, artistic practices and thought. Since 2004, NERO has published books and catalogues, curated art exhibitions and organised cultural projects, both independently and in collaboration with public and private institutions. NERO’s books are distributed both in Italy (through ALI) and internationally, and are available in all specialist and sector bookshops, as well as in general bookshops and major retail chains. Through its widespread presence, NERO aims to generate a debate capable of crossing the boundaries of the visual arts and of social, political and philosophical reflection, providing a genuine toolkit of theoretical and linguistic instruments with which to decode our present.
The affinity linking Short Theatre and NERO has led the two organisations to share a path of redefinition of the festival’s visual identity and to co-produce projects in the theoretical and editorial field, among them Short Books – a publishing series launched in 2022 comprising several titles conceived to expand the theoretical, aesthetic and historical horizons of the performing arts: translations of foreign texts, straddling theory and art criticism, not yet received in the Italian context; anthologies of theoretical and critical texts from out-of-print journals and catalogues; original short essays commissioned from Italian authors.
In 2025, NERO Editions co-curates with Short Theatre the participatory work they shoot horses by Phil Collins.
ATCL – Associazione Teatrale fra i Comuni del Lazio
ATCL – Associazione Teatrale fra i Comuni del Lazio is the body for the distribution, promotion and audience development of live performance, recognised today as a Multidisciplinary Circuit (theatre, dance, music) by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MiC) and the Lazio Region. For more than 30 years, ATCL has supported the circulation of live performance across the regional territory, in pursuit of a cultural policy capable of countering the centripetal pull of the capital, through projects dedicated to both small and large municipalities and opening up to a European perspective, in order to shape a constantly evolving sense of regional identity.
In 2025, ATCL makes Spazio Rossellini available for a week-long residency by director and performer Alexia Sarantopoulou, from 4 to 10 September, in collaboration with Bluemotion. A presence that weaves together pathways of research, care and accompaniment, broadening the gaze onto the contemporary scene.
Master in Gender Studies and Politics, Roma Tre / Arts Module
The Arts Module of the Master in Gender Studies and Politics at Roma Tre University develops the theoretical tools for reading contemporary aesthetics and languages of the body, live arts and performance through a feminist engagement with the thinking of practices; it works towards the creation of a glossary of the present in order to build new grammars of the sensible and exercises of political imagination. To de-neutralise, de-universalise, de-colonise: the gaze, representations, narratives.
In the 2025 edition of Short Theatre, the collaboration is renewed and deepened within CLASSE, a nomadic thinking device that traverses the festival. The Module takes place in an intensive format, as a theoretical and affective immersion in the festival’s programme, weaving together lectures, seminars, shared practices, performances, meetings and gatherings. This year’s edition is dedicated to militant research, its porous and traversable spaces, and the political urgencies that today interrogate the relationship between artistic practices, activism and transfeminist theory. A path that takes a stance and questions the present, through bodies that resist and narratives that transform
www.masterstudiepolitichedigenere.it
PAV / Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe
Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe is a cooperation project whose aim is the support and promotion of contemporary dramaturgy in Europe, in order to consolidate and strengthen the activities and strategies of artists working in the sector. Fabulamundi ran from 2017 to 2020 across 10 European countries, with 15 partners including theatres, festivals and cultural organisations in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Romania, Austria, Belgium, Poland, England and the Czech Republic, and a further 8 twinned countries, coordinated by PAV. The project – of which Short Theatre has been a partner from the outset – was funded twice by the European Commission, in 2013 and 2015, and has continued its journey across Europe until 2020 thanks to Creative Europe 2014–2020 funding. It now opens a new chapter: NEW VOICES, which aims to bring contemporary dramaturgy closer to younger generations, in the name of European values and heritage.
Short Theatre 2025, as a partner of the project, hosts at Teatro India the fourth workshop encounter of Assimilativo, a process led by Eva Geatti and open to participants under 27. A workshop that moves across body, environment, image and word as instruments for remixing matter and allowing oneself to be traversed by new possibilities of listening and transformation.
Also within the spaces of Teatro India, Frani Dibiase and Roberto Leandro Pau – as part of the Playground for New Voices project – share with the public the outcomes of their dramaturgical research, at the conclusion of a three-day residency. The opening Lettera Aperta, scheduled for 10 September, symbolically closes the cycle of work dedicated to new writing.
www.pav-it.eu
www.fabulamundi.eu
DRIFT – Dance & Research In The Future Time
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.
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.
Da.Re. Dance Research
Short Theatre collaborates with Da.Re. Dance Research – Dynamic Systems for Research and Transmission in the Contemporary Performing Arts, a project conceived and directed by Adriana Borriello, dedicated to advanced training and research in the contemporary performing arts at the level of Higher Artistic Education, specific to the Dance sector and aimed at the training of professional and artistic figures with broad scope of activity across the live performance production chain.
Short Theatre renews its collaboration with Da.Re., welcoming within the framework of Teatro India the residency of Leo Schifino, Manuela Cirfera and Enrico Frisoni, accompanied by Davide Uccellari and Filippo Lilli, in a choreographic research process that opens onto the festival space as a place of inquiry and sharing. A crossing that reaffirms the importance of the relationship between training, artistic practices and context.
www.abcdare.it
Embassy and Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
The collaboration with the Embassy and Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands has this year been interwoven with the presence of Carolina Bianchi, who presented her CAMERA, and Cherish Menzo, protagonist of a CLASSE in dialogue with Johanne Affricot. Both associate artists of Theater Utrecht, they have contributed to broadening the festival’s international trajectories, bringing to Rome practices and visions that traverse the contemporary Dutch scene.
www.netherlandsandyou.nl
Dominio Pubblico
Dominio Pubblico is an audience development project aimed at young people under 25 who wish to experiment with a pathway as active spectators, directed towards a knowledge of the contemporary scene and the production, promotion and organisation of a multidisciplinary festival. DP in tour is a format conceived as a tool for the circulation of young audiences at a national level and for building a network of organisations that invest in a new generation of artists and in the creation of a participatory audience. DP moves through the festival with a group of young people who follow and actively participate, documenting their experience through photos, videos, GIFs and Stories, using social media and the blog.
www.dominiopubblicoteatro.it
P.A.C. (Performing Arts Contemporanee)
Short Theatre is a member of the P.A.C. network, formed out of collaborations between various cultural organisations that have been operating in Rome for a number of years, active in particular in the planning and delivery of activities within the Estate Romana and in other Roman, national and international contexts, events and festivals. Artistic commitment, community engagement and an international outlook are the hallmarks of PAC.
www.pacnetwork.org
Bar and Catering
This year, Alaska – which has been looking after the festival’s food and drink for the public since 2020 – is joined by Cu.Cu Cucina e Cultura and the Laboratorio di ristorazione Quarticciolo, who handle catering for the staff. The three organisations bring to the festival a convivial atmosphere that is both sustainable and of quality, and share with ST25 a political and attentive sensibility.
Alaska Since 2020, Alaska has run SHORT BAR, Short Theatre’s bar, accompanying the time before, after and between performances, during concerts and meetings. A place to share the festival space together.
Alaska is a small community committed to offering a quality food and drink service for artistic and cultural events, working in close collaboration with Gargani Parioli, a gastronomic institution since 1956, from which it sources exclusively.
Cu.Cu Cucina e Cultura (www.cucinaecultura.com) is Rome’s first organic, eco-sustainable and fair-trade catering company. Their core activity is the provision of a catering service in Rome based exclusively on products from organic, zero-kilometre and fair-trade supply chains. The producers they work with are known and tested suppliers within local purchasing groups (GAS). Another fundamental characteristic of their catering – one that follows necessarily from the choice of organic produce – is the seasonality of their ingredients.
The Quarticciolo Catering Laboratory is a neighbourhood work project born from and for women. It began as a cooking course and became a place of encounter and exchange of knowledge about the everyday fabric of each person’s life. It is a project in development, built on the conviction that cooking is not a neutral practice that begins and ends at the stove. The aim is to create a space within the neighbourhood that serves as a place of meeting and self-organisation for its own community; a local work opportunity that frees up time from the long commutes that so often burden us, that liberates us from wages too low and from a practice that alienates us from the rest of life.
MAIN SPONSOR
URBANVISION
A special edition marked by new synergies, among them the one with media company Urban Vision Group – a leader in urban communications and the promotion of cultural value – this year’s Main Sponsor of Short Theatre and an essential partner in supporting both the realisation and the storytelling of the festival. Guided by the visionary outlook that distinguishes CEO Gianluca De Marchi, Urban Vision Group will co-produce video interventions connected to the performances taking place in the festival’s spaces, projecting them daily onto their large LED screen positioned at the heart of Testaccio, on the façade of the former Mattatoio. An expressive ‘macroscope’ that will transform urban space by becoming a bridge between the festival’s performances and the city, reaching people and creating inclusive, cross-generational communities.
www.urbanvision.com