From 29 August 2026 to 29 August 2026
Attraverso Festival: Marco Paolini
The new theatrical project by Marco Paolini, a powerful and urgent narrative that intertwines memory, ecology, history, and the future
Water Bestiary
a show by
Marco Paolini
written with
Giulio Boccaletti
dramaturgy collaboration
Marta Dalla Via, Diego Dalla Via, Michela Signori
with
Marco Paolini and Patrizia Laquidara
Marco Paolini
The show brings to the stage a poetic and civic journey through the Italian hydraulic landscape, made of rivers, dams, canals, pumps, floodplains, and land reclamation works that are often invisible but essential. A bestiary of creatures and mutations, where water becomes the protagonist and a metaphor for change, identity, and the fragility of an entire ecosystem.
Paolini guides us with his unmistakable narration through reflections on climate change, water policies, and the history of the territory, revealing how water resource management has shaped not only the landscape but also communities, the economy, and social relations. Water Bestiary is narrative theater, emotional geography, and critical thinking.
An invitation to reconsider what appears natural to us, but is the result of centuries of choices, mistakes, and coexistence. Because water, today more than ever, is a resource to be understood and defended.
A show that speaks about all of us, the shores we inhabit, and the future we can still decide.
Hydraulic works tend to become invisible, blending into the environment that contains them.
This happens to dirt embankments and floodplains, but also to pumping stations, canals, reservoirs, and even dams.
The Italian landscape became agricultural through layers of settlements lasting centuries. Cities and towns have also settled (and moved…) over centuries.
Industries for only just over a century. Hydraulic works accompany each of these steps; not just the aqueducts from the Romans onwards, but the sometimes massive diversions and embankments, land reclamation works, hydroelectric reservoirs, and disposal networks.
The Italian landscape is artificial, yet the network of hydraulic works escapes our perception.
Through Festival
Eleven years of Through Festival!
An important milestone, telling the story of a journey made of encounters, territories and culture.
Eleven years of building the most widespread of all Piedmont festivals, consisting of a network of events that extends for over 200 km and unites three provinces – Asti, Alessandria and Cuneo – and wonderful and diverse territories from the Alps to the Piedmont Apennines through Langhe, Roero, Monferrato.
Areas united by breathtaking landscapes, unique traditions and food and wine heritage, but which had never really found a point of connection.
Through Festival, with the simple power of a beautiful show in a special place on a summer evening, has been able to bridge this distance, creating a new bond in these lands, making them a great community for this occasion.
