LENZ THEATRE
Dal 1988 Lenz Refractions – dal 2015 Lenz Foundation – carries out its activity in an industrial building on the historic outskirts of Parma, in an area close to the city centre, but still marked by the industrial origin of the neighborhood, where the large glassworks established at the end of the nineteenth century are still active.
The presence of Lenz Teatro in the S. Leonardo, it represents the displacement of the place of artistic production from the center to the periphery, the departure from traditional concentrations of culture, identification of the exit axis from the city (A1 motorway and railway) as a possibility of communication with the extra-urban territory. The recovery of this space constitutes the possibility of redeveloping and re-functionalizing an urban area of extraordinary historical and symbolic importance of the city.
Following a serious fire that made the space unusable for about two years, Lenz Theater was reopened to the public in September 2001, after an important renovation work carried out by the Arch. Isabella Tagliavini, which led to the adaptation of technological systems, the re-functionalization of service spaces and the removal of architectural barriers.
Lenz Teatro has preserved the industrial identity of the production spaces, highlighting their architectural and functional characteristics. The area of the premises is approx 1000 mq. E’ equipped with two theater halls, entrance, office area, archive room, two dressing rooms, scenic laboratory, costume, makeup room, four toilets (including service for the disabled), warehouse, elevator, three access stairs and related emergency exits. Lenz Theater is a place of cultural production, of experimentation and theatrical training, of music research.
LENZ THEATRE 2017. FROM WORK TO WORK
Finally, a thirty-year experience of national and international cultural production but always aimed primarily at the city becomes, also as a physical urban space, publicly owned.
After the entry of the Municipality of Parma and the University of Parma into the Lenz Foundation as supporting members, the acquisition of Lenz Teatro represents a definitive institutional recognition of the public function and inclusive of the artistic and educational activities of Lenz Fondazione.
The property purchased by the company Scedep in 1930, was built in 1893 from the Tosi company & Rizzoli, the Piedmontese food canning industry, which had arrived in Parma in 1892. The company was mainly involved in the production of canned food. Then she took over the 1904 the Parmigiana Company of Food Products which continued with the production of preserves and anchovies. In the 1930, Scedep finally installed a production line for cans in tinplate. The company continued to develop until the fifties and well 110 workers worked in the factory, then he progressively reduced production, until the 1976 date on which the activity ceased definitively.
Then abandonment, degradation, the loss of any social function, economic and urban life lasting twenty-two years.
In the 1988 Lenz Refractions, then cultural association, he decided to proceed with the recovery of the space for cultural and artistic production by opting for a move from the center to the periphery, from the traditional concentrations of culture to the identification of the exit axis from the city (A1 motorway and railway) as a possibility of communication with the extra-urban territory. Recovery, In summary, of an area of extraordinary historical and symbolic importance for the city.
Several internationally and nationally renowned artists have presented their works at the Lenz Theater, interspersed with a continuous activity of artistic production and cultural education.
Following a serious fire that made the space unusable for about two years, Lenz Theater was reopened to the public in September 2001, at the end of a complex restructuring project carried out with the support of public and private entities which led to the adaptation of the technological systems, the re-functionalization of service spaces and the removal of architectural barriers.
Lenz Teatro has preserved the industrial identity of the production spaces, and is still endowed with great charm, the roofs, for example, are with original Polonceau-type trusses and iron tie rods. The area of the premises is approx 1000 mq. with two theater halls, entrance, office area, two dressing rooms, scenic laboratory, costume, makeup room, four toilets (including service for the disabled), warehouse, elevator, three access stairs and related emergency exits.
From work to work, from industrial production to cultural production: the city regains possession of a piece of its historical memory.
September 2017
LENZ FOUNDATION
Work memory. Theater place
Il 1988 he revealed to us the secret spaces of the building, the great halls, rooms, the corridors, the windows on the courtyards, the attic. Paths, empty, from the outside into an inside that goes into an inside, a labyrinth of streets in an urban body between other bodies similar in function and architecture. Its birth dates back to the thirties. When we walked through it for the first time we were already inside a possible scene, the acoustics of the rooms were immediately generous and the subdivision of the spaces, functional for workers, it was perfectly suited for theater work. A laboratory and research theatre. A working theatre, Therefore.
We only took out a few walls that had been added over the decades, installed an air heating system and an electrical system suitable for theatrical use. We have created an entrance with a standard access stairway, a reading room, two large halls of representation, a hospitality room, two offices, a scenic laboratory, make-up rooms and two toilets. Bruno Ganz and Edith Clever thanked us for taking them back to the time of the first Schaubühne and giving them back a “manner and an air” who thought they were lost.
All the spaces of the building are used for the representation according to the different dramaturgical choices, but it is in the two large rooms that we create most of the artistic works. Sala Mayakovsky and Sala Est. Poetry and the Orient, two central points of Lenz's work Rifrazioni. Poetry as a necessity and the Orient in tragedy. Hölderlin. The empty space, horizontal and vertical, down and up, it fills up with actors' bodies, of voices, sounds, artificial and natural colors according to dramatic lines and curves. And everything remains, beyond representation, imprinted in space. In memory. But also on the walls, on the floor, on the iron rods, on the roof of beams and bricks. The work continues to leave recognizable and unrecognizable marks, in the light or hidden, for all or for someone.
The whole building is located in the historic district of the city, historic for industrialization and urban quality; from a neighborhood of workers' struggles and a dormitory it is rapidly transforming itself into an extension of the commercial and tertiary centre. The architecture changes rapidly and overthrows the great industrial centers of the past, few spaces remain that the city should recover for the cultural and productive function. Art always needs space. Like the rest of the man.
Francesco Pititto, 1992
Theater space
“Theater space, to be alive, it must have proportions and memory. If it is no longer the palace of spectators or the museum of culture, it can be the home of the actors. A place inhabited even before and after the show, a workplace where you have an interest in being a guest. One can certainly live in houses built for others or for something else (that's what is usually done); you can also build a house to live in as artists and to receive guests. Here the spectator who comes to the show feels the lived space and sees that space as a living and functional element of the show itself; here the space of the show creates the condition of its being watched, create the viewer.
In Greek culture the theater was one of the sacred places of the polis; in the Renaissance theater, however, the myth of the ancient space came true in the practices of the court room, the place of self-celebration; the civilization of the bourgeoisie made the theater the monument of the city, first as the Church and the Town Hall building, such as the Stock Exchange and the School or the Museum; today the theater is the separate space in which those values of interrelation are exalted which have been painstakingly and dramatically reconquered from the daily negation. But every theater project will remain only a monument or will become like those uninhabited houses of which only the facade remains if it is not given as a home to the men of the theatre.”
Thus ended Fabrizio Cruciani, among the most sensitive Italian theater scholars, the eighth chapter – Letter to an architect – of his research “Theater space” and this fragment continues to tell perfectly about our experience. Lenz Teatro represents one of the very few examples of concrete theater in Italy obtained from post-industrial spaces reinvented as an artistic home by the stubborn and private will of a group of artists, Lenz Refractions. Dal 1989 today hundreds of student actors, thousands of spectators, dozens of artists and companies from all over Europe have been our guests in the meaning of Cruciani.
Today this place is undergoing a radical transformation within a larger one “urban redevelopment” and a project for a new theater on the structure of the old one was carried out by one of the most advanced architectural studios in the world – the MBM Arquitectes di Oriol Bohigas – but we still don't know if it will be built or if a new building will be built for now classified “cultural pole”. We have been listened to and have indicated many priorities in order to maintain continuity with the experience practiced up to now and never separated from an artistic but, in the time of waiting for a decision above our will, we would like that, starting from the aforementioned research, we would like to take stock again of the contemporary state of things as regards the space of the theater.
In recent years, several Italian cities have recovered spaces of industrial archeology for a cultural function, as has been done in England for decades, Germania, France but the increase of possibilities “housing” has not always favored the birth of new expressiveness and permanent linguistic dynamism but rather the quantitative response to a need for a home for many realities in search of space, but which in most cases are reduced to necessarily provisional solutions given the chronic lack of adequate public support that guarantees continuity. Furthermore, without any reflection on the relationship between dramaturgy and designed space, between actor and spectator, between perception and creation. Quite a different matter on historical and monumental spaces used for momentary installations and theatrical performative actions, music or dance that undergo temporary metamorphoses, enhancing both their status as representative buildings of the history of a community and their intrinsic willingness to become prestigious containers of the contemporary. The Reggia di Colorno is a superlative example of this aesthetic ductility, architectural, artistic. On these and other topics, the thirteenth edition of the international festival Natura Dèi Teatri has opened a free and informal discussion between architects, creatives and artists, between technicians and spectators present during the performances and performance events.
Francesco Pititto, 2008
Ex-Scedep 1930 – Lenz Theatre 1988
Lenz spaces
Hall East
Sala Majakovskij
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LENZ CONTEMPORARY LOCATION
Advertising projects, Communication, Media P.R.
Lenz Theater_private residence: location located in an industrial environment of the 30s renovated respecting the typology, it is normally a visual and performing arts space since 1989 and exceptionally unusual ART_LOCATION for conventions, stile, show-room, design, promotion, ad hoc installations and more, for contemporary communication, out of stereotypes. Very close to the highway, railway station and historic center of Parma.
Lenz_production project: location for performance events, fittings, special installations, visual communication created ad hoc by the creative direction for production and commercial realities. Brand identity set-ups for companies, shops, fairs for promotional and advertising purposes. Creation of corporate party events, special events, Christmas events.
Endowment
2 sale (underfloor heating)
1 great of 300 mq
1 average of 200 mq
on request equipped with:
light park
consolles
impianto audio high-quality
cinema screens
highly qualified artistic and technical personnel
