Teatro Azione Festival – The Art of Encounter

A festival for those stepping onto the stage today

There is a precise moment in an actor's life when school ends and the profession begins. It is to this transition that the Teatro Azione Festival – The Art of Encounter is dedicated, the event that since 2026 has closed the season at TeatroBasilica, in the heart of Rome, just a few steps from Porta San Giovanni. The idea is both simple and ambitious: to build a concrete bridge between academic training and the professional world, placing graduates from the Teatro Azione school to work side-by-side with established directors of contemporary Italian theatre.

The team behind it

Artistic direction is entrusted to Andrea Baracco, one of the most recognizable directors of his generation and a third-year Interpretation professor at the school. Teatro Azione, founded in Rome in 1983 by Cristiano Censi and Isabella Del Bianco, is one of the capital's longest-running training institutions: its classrooms have produced performers now well-known to the general public, from Elio Germano to Maya Sansa, and from Edoardo Pesce to Carolina Crescentini. In this sense, the festival is the natural public extension of a three-year educational journey.

The poison of love: the theme of the first edition

The first edition chose The Poison of Love as its guiding thread, using the dramaturgy of William Shakespeare as its material. Not a museum-like tribute, but a tool for reading the present: Shakespearean comedies and tragedies become the field to investigate the fragility, obsessions, and imbalances of contemporary relationships. It is a choice that also speaks volumes about the method, as the classical repertoire remains the most demanding testing ground for those approaching the stage.

How the program is structured

The heart of the bill consists of the three graduation showcases of the third-year students, each entrusted to a different director and performed in a series of multiple shows. Surrounding this core is a lighter and more curious program:

• Full-length plays — the three Shakespearean productions, featuring large companies of over fifteen performers on stage;
• Studies and short forms — small-format theatrical works created by the school's young authors and performers;
• Meetings with directors — open dialogues with the public about the process of building a show;
• Graduation ceremony — the final third-year ceremony, which coincides with the festival's closing party.

TeatroBasilica, a hundred-seat venue

The venue is no mere detail. TeatroBasilica is an intimate space, with about a hundred red seats facing a stage with no safety distance: the proximity between actor and spectator is part of the experience and makes the work on body and voice particularly evident. Directed by Daniela Giovanetti and Alessandro Di Murro, in recent years it has become a reference point for the independent Roman scene, with a program that alternates contemporary research and reinterpretations of the repertoire.

Rome, June, theatre

The festival takes place at a happy moment in the Lazio cultural calendar: the first half of June, when the indoor season is winding down and the Roman summer has not yet reached its peak. For those visiting the capital, it is a non-touristy and very authentic opportunity to come into contact with the theatre that is truly being made in the city. The neighborhood, between San Giovanni and Esquilino, also offers one of the most interesting concentrations of trattorias and local spots in the "non-postcard" Rome, ideal for dinner before or after the show.

Why it's worth going

Because it is a festival that doesn't sell names, but promises. Those who attend accept the gamble of seeing actors at the beginning of their journey, yet guided by expert hands: a condition that often produces a rare quality of energy and risk in theatre. And because, statistically, you will find some of those faces on an important stage or screen in a few years.