VOCES Theatre Experience

VOCES Theatre Experience: when places start to speak again

VOCES Theatre Experience is a traveling festival dedicated to theatre and the promotion of cultural heritage, taking place in the town of Celano and other locations across the Marsica region, in the province of L'Aquila, in the heart of Abruzzo. From May to September, the festival transforms some of the territory's most fascinating sites into narrative spaces where history, memory, and the voices of the past return to inhabit the stage.

Theatre that traverses the landscape

The festival is born from the idea that places never stop speaking: castles, archaeological areas, and ancient churches hold sedimented stories that contemporary theatre reactivates and returns to the public. VOCES offers stage performances, site-specific shows, and theatrical walks, designed to create a dialogue between dramaturgy, architecture, and the landscape in an immersive and participatory experience.

The venues of Marsica

The heart of the festival is the Castello Piccolomini in Celano, home to the Torlonia Collection and the Museum of Sacred Art of Marsica, but the festival extends to other symbolic locations in the territory:

• Alba Fucens Archaeological Area, one of the most important Roman sites in Abruzzo;
• Church of San Pietro in Albe, a Romanesque jewel rebuilt after the Marsica earthquake;
• Abbazia di Santo Spirito al Morrone in Sulmona, the new venue for the most recent edition.

A nationally recognized project

VOCES is promoted by the Castello Piccolomini in Celano and the Regional Directorate of National Museums of Abruzzo, under the artistic direction of Teatro Lanciavicchio, a historic Abruzzese company specializing in site-specific performances and theatrical paths. The project is funded by the Ministry of Culture and ranked second nationwide among live performance projects in cultural venues, the only initiative funded in Abruzzo out of thirty-three selected across Italy.

Performances and dramaturgy

The program combines major revisited texts with new dramaturgy linked to the Marsica territory. Titles include reinterpretations of classical myths, such as the Odyssey told from a female perspective, and theatrical walks dedicated to the travelers who crossed Abruzzo over a century ago. Each performance is the result of careful historical and bibliographic research into the culture of Marsica, creating a theatre that is simultaneously a show, a memory, and a community experience.