The third edition of the contemporary theatre season “Cosa porta il vento” kicks off on 1 March, under the artistic direction of Tiziana Giordano, organised by the Circo dell’avvenire association and made possible with the patronage of the Municipality of Cefalù.
The season, with free admission, will run from March to May 2026 at the Teatro Comunale “Salvatore Cicero” and will present five nationally acclaimed productions that will take audiences on an exploratory journey around the theme of “human relationships”, the focus of this third edition.
“In this moment of history, when violence between people and between nations rages with ever greater relentlessness, when we are constantly submerged by apocalyptic images – real and virtual –, by unspeakable words and unjust actions, I feel once again the need to find, through theatre, a place and a time in which to bring people back to the centre, along with the relationships that bind them and the very meaning of our humanity”. With these words Tiziana Giordano introduces the season, and adds: “We need to renegotiate our human coordinates and start again from the generative cores of our sociality. Theatre offers us the chance to find each other again as a community and, through the five productions on offer, it will invite us to reflect on the meaning and importance of human relationships, on their complexity and on the contradictions that run through them. Theatre asks us to slow down, to feel our breath, to open our eyes and to listen carefully to what happens around us and within us, in this time when we are called to be present, before it is too late”.
“We believe in the power of theatre as a tool for growth and reflection, as well as a moment of social connection – says the mayor of Cefalù Daniele Tumminello – and that is why the administration supports theatre seasons like this one. We believe that exploring human relationships, the theme chosen this year for the third edition of Cosa porta il vento, is necessary to build a context that looks to people’s needs with a view to improving the society in which we live our time”.
The season begins with relationships of love and friendship, on Sunday 1 March, with “Celia”, a musical show paying tribute to the sixteenth-century Sicilian poet Antonio Veneziano. Centuries later, his love octaves dedicated to his beloved Celia are brought back to the audience through the musical compositions of Maestro Maurizio Curcio, with the collaboration of Roberta Scacciaferro and Valentina Migliore. The Celia artistic project, with executive production by the Le Baccanti cooperative, won the 2025 SIAE national call for new music productions. The three artists will be joined on stage by Romina Denaro on double bass, Giuseppe Viola on wind instruments and actor Anton Giulio Pandolfo as Miguel de Cervantes, with whom Veneziano shared a cell during two years of imprisonment in Algiers, an experience followed by a significant exchange of letters.
On Saturday 21 March the Compagnia Teatro Insania of Naples will present “Mare di Ruggine. La favola dell’Ilva 2.0”, winner of numerous prizes and awards, including the 2025 National Critics’ Prize.
The show, written and directed by Antimo Casertano, who performs alongside Daniela Ioia, Luigi Credendino and Francesca De Nicolais, a Fondazione Teatro di Napoli – Teatro Bellini production, tells the story of a family spanning five generations that runs parallel to the history of the former Ilva plant, later Italsider, in Bagnoli. A journey through collective memory and working-class identity, through union struggles, deindustrialisation and the social wounds left by time, allowing us to explore the complex dynamics of working, economic and power relationships.
A novelty of the season’s third edition is the “Sunday for young and old”, which on Sunday 29 March will feature the contemporary figure theatre show “Felicia”, by Stefania Ventura and Quinzio Quiescenti, a Quintoequilibrio and Teatro Evento production. The show, winner of the CURA 2022 call, the Premio Sicilia di Scena 2023 and a special mention from the Teatro & Critica network among the best shows of 2023, blends the aesthetics of the fairy tale with profound social themes, exploring relationships with otherness, exclusion, prejudice and the fragile path towards mutual understanding.
The season continues on Sunday 12 April with “Capinera”, written, directed and performed by Rosy Bonfiglio, a La Memoria del Teatro ETS production, selected for Fringe Catania Off 2024, winner of the Palco Off Italian professionals’ Awards and of a special mention from Retablo for best direction and best performance. The show highlights human relationships deeply marked by social and moral conditioning, through a contemporary dramatic adaptation of Giovanni Verga’s nineteenth-century novel, in which the central theme is the “cages”, real and metaphorical, that imprison the protagonist Maria, who represents all the “capinere” of history and of our own times. The show will be repeated for schools on Monday 13 April in the morning.
The season will close on Sunday 3 May with “Se son fiori moriranno”, written and directed by Rosario Palazzolo, with Simona Malato, Delia Calò and Chiara Peritore, a Teatro Biondo di Palermo production. A show that dissects family relationships, entering the closed room where a mother and a daughter live, between past and present, bound by a pain so unbearable that it finds relief only in imagination, which the author describes as “a boon, a curse, a device and a trap”, capable of sabotaging reality, slowing the relentlessness of events and building new imaginaries so improbable that they transfigure the truth. It will be repeated for schools on Monday 4 May in the morning.
The season is free of charge until seats run out. Afternoon shows start at 6:30 pm; the two Monday-morning repeats, for schools, at 11:00 am.
In-depth material on the shows will be available on the websites and social channels of the Municipality of Cefalù and of Circo dell’avvenire.
For information, write to [email protected]
Click here to see the events in detail
