Collinarea Festival

Collinarea Festival: Contemporary Art between Lari and Pontedera

The Collinarea Festival is a multidisciplinary event featuring theatre, dance, music, and performing arts, held every summer in two iconic locations in the Pisan hills: the medieval village of Lari, in the municipality of Casciana Terme Lari, and the La Rotta River Park, a hamlet of Pontedera, in the province of Pisa, in the heart of Tuscany. For over two weeks, the town squares, the Vicari Castle, the Lari Theatre, and the open-air spaces along the river become one large, immersive stage.

A history spanning nearly thirty years

The roots of Collinarea go back to 1999, when director Loris Seghizzi launched the first editions of a theatre and performing arts festival in the village of Lari. Since 2020, the festival has been organized by the Sartoria Caronte APS company, which has taken up the artistic legacy while profoundly innovating its language. The artistic direction is led by Loris Seghizzi, supported by Mirco Mencacci, an internationally renowned sound engineer and designer who curates the section dedicated to sound research.

Theatre, dance, music, and sound research

The Collinarea program combines various languages of the contemporary scene: prose, experimental theatre, dance, contemporary circus, concerts, and sound installations. Each year, the festival hosts numerous Italian and foreign companies, with a strong emphasis on national premieres and previews. A significant part of the festival is dedicated to sound and immersive technologies, featuring interactive sound experiences and the Collinarea PhD Summer School, a doctoral summer program organized in collaboration with leading Italian universities.

The Ubiquitous Opera

The most anticipated moment of every edition is the ubiquitous opera, a closing performance that fuses opera, experimental music, theatre, dance, video, and sound into one grand event distributed across multiple stages within the village. The audience follows the action by moving between the performance sites, in an immersive experience involving dozens of artists and technicians.

A festival rooted in the territory

Collinarea is much more than just a series of shows: it is a cultural project that enhances the heritage of the Pisan hill villages, involving the communities of Casciana Terme Lari and Pontedera. Supported by the Ministry of Culture, the Tuscany Region, and local administrations, the festival has become a benchmark for the independent performing arts scene in Tuscany and an opportunity to discover an authentic corner of the province of Pisa.