Nomadic School

To fulfil this gap, the caravan becomes a platform resonating OHT’s research on theatre and set-designing in relation to natural and urban spaces. A discourse that does not ignore the place where it occurs; a Caravan designed as a flexible framework where different spaces can be plugged in. As suggested by architect Cedric Price, Little Fun Palace has its ultimate goal in the possibility of change at the behest of its users and content. Consequently, the nomadic school will re-think the shape of the Caravan every time a public programme will be hosted. Specific designed components will immerge Little Fun Palace in its surroundings. By designing and building further features of Little Fun Palace, we will deepen its position into society, its position in the world, its geographical position. The Caravan will be simultaneously a study of the world as well as a part of it echoing Cedric Price’s educational ideas of making flexible architecture to have an actual impact on our world. A Caravan denying hierarchical transmission of knowledge to connect set-design and theatre to real life and avoiding separations between moments of learning, of fun, of encounter, of collectiveness and moments of individuality

On a theoretical level, the project moves its first step from Gertrude Stein’s idea of “a play as a landscape” and how her ideas might resonate outside the stage. In the research, set-design and architecture are active ingredients of the theoretical discourse as well as on a practical level via the Caravan position in public space. A space that to be defined as public is meant to be agonistic, heterogeneous rather than homogenous, where different people, ideas and words live together. In this regard there’s a neglected theatre tradition that prompted landscape not simply as a backdrop or scenery but as detonator of feelings. Authors like Anton Cechov, Maurice Maeterlink, Samuel Beckett, Henrik Ibsen or Heiner Müller made use of landscape as a theoretical tool to overstep the limits of antropochene, psychologism and logo-centrism.

A further comparison with ideas taken from other field of research might be crucial to expand the perception of theatre. One example is the definition of unintentional design applied to landscapes by anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing: “that is, the overlapping world-making activities of many agents, human and not human. The design is clear in the landscape’s ecosystem. But none of the agents have planned this effect. Humans join other in making landscapes of unintentional design”. In climate activism, landscapes are less and less backdrop of human activities. They are active, living beings together with humans. Landscapes are the quintessence of the world understood as space where life is shared with others. They are references for down scaling human beings within the ecosystem and this process might be applied to theatre as well; a democratisation of the stage where set-design and scenography are not just backdrops of the drama but active part of it. The current aesthetic regime embodied on stage is still enormously linked to actors and actresses as centre of the action and of the plot. However, an ecological turn is possible also in theatre-making and democratising all the elements involved into the artistic process might also be a metaphor for opening up theatre to different perspectives decentralising human hubris. The initial construction workshop of the Nomadic School becomes an opportunity to produce a space where people can connect and talk. In a gradual way the workshop adapts a place to the caravan and vice versa, materialises reality by creating an ecosystem previously absent. An attempt to give space to the thoughts and words to come. The workshop becomes the time of materialisation, where reality materialises through a collective gesture of participants and future guests.

Furthermore, if landscape represents the possibility to connect all the parts, it also represents the impossibility to be isolated. This is why Little Fun Palace is not meant to be just a single person research but an experiment where individuality joins collective moments. A time together where the Caravan turns into a nomadic school. A school inspired by spatial researchers like Josef Albers at the Black Mountain College where life and studies couldn’t be separated. These collective moments reveals a research methodology that continuously invents its own model. The Caravan will change shape via workshops with students that will literally modify it by designing new features necessary for the cultural programme of the Caravan itself, and for its position within a specific surroundings.

Creating a nomadic community in different environments is fundamental to embrace the concept of mutability and to underline the importance of a space that does not belong only to us. Once the location has been chosen and the caravan has been prepared for that specific environment, the nomadic school will take place for a limited period of time. Each programme will be a series of talks, screening, encounters, tiny performances, dj-sets and so on. All these micro-ecologies will compose a dialogical Caravan, a multitude of voices from guests to audiences without dogmatic structures that together will think of theatre, set-design and climate crisis as an aesthetic territory that has political implications without using a political language.

To conclude, creating a nomadic school around Little Fun Palace will not deliver a final or conclusive model about theatre as public space, nor a clear methodology about how to think performance design and scenography within a semi-public space as theatre. The project aims to be a performative Caravan reflecting on itself and -at the same time- on different artistic practices. Existing in the endless exchange between the environments, the guests and the students gravitating around the Caravan. To a certain extend, embracing the uncertainty of gathering different points of view, of creating an heterogeneous community, is what will make the production of knowledge tangible for all the participants.