Lenz Foundation

Founded on 13 November 2014 dalle Associazioni Culturali Lenz Rifrazioni e Natura Dèi Teatri, collects its historical legacy (1986 for Lenz e 1996 for nature) continuing, seamlessly, and with identical rigor the action of artistic research, creation, training, international hospitality in the field of performing arts and sensitivity, but with a broader artistic project, cultural and scientific. Lenz Foundation obtains recognition as a Cultural Body Recognized by the Prefecture of Parma on 15 January 2015 and registered in the register of private legal entities.

La direzione artistica della Fondazione è curata da Maria Federica Maestri e Francesco Pititto, who is its President. Presidente onorario e direttore scientifico il Dott. Rocco Caccavari, former president of Natura Dèi Teatri.

Nel triennio 2015-2017 la Fondazione intende realizzare un complesso progetto di creazioni performative e visuali contemporanee, and musical and theatrical co-productions to be created in collaboration with local institutions, national and international, of integrated laboratory practices aimed at people with mental disabilities, intellectual, sensory.

In the contemporary theater panorama the Lenz, with their scenic-installation grammar, rigorous artistic practice, l’esclusivo linguaggio estetico, the radical expressive sense, they represent a unique team, per la quale la parola “ricerca” continua ad essere motore della loro visione. Da Shakespeare a Goethe, da Ovidio a Kleist, each new dramaturgical elaboration is an authentic journey into a vision of the world. And of man. Giuseppe Distefano – Il Sole 24 Ore

Dopo il suggestivo e inquientante Hamlet nell’enorme spazio del Teatro Farnese, Lenz therefore continues to shuffle the cards of the classic and the myth, radically reforming the canon in the name of the contemporary. Andrea Porcheddu – Linkiesta

Büchner, Hölderlin, Lenz, Kleist, Rilke, Dostoevsky, Mayakovsky, Shakespeare, Goethe, Grimm, Andersen, Calderón de la Barca, Genet, Lorca, Bacchini, Ovidio, Virgilio, Manzoni, d'Annunzio: these are the authors who have marked Lenz's monographic and multi-year projects, from 1985. The recent contemporary performative creation projects are the artistic result of in-depth visual research, filmic, space, dramaturgical and sound.

In an aesthetic convergence between exegetical fidelity to the word of the text, visual radicality of film creation, originality and conceptual extremism of the artistic installation, Lenz's work rewrites the philosophical tensions and aesthetic anxieties of contemporaneity in visionary signs.

Translation, dramaturgical rewriting, imagoturgy of the works are by Francesco Pititto, who directs it together with Maria Federica Maestri. The scenic installations and costumes are created by Maria Federica Maestri, noted by critics for her work of "dramaturgy of matter", for the system of visual signs that constitute his very personal "design-acted". Le musiche originali sono di Andrea Azzali, musicista sperimentatore di elaborazioni e composizioni elettroniche, artista residente e docente di sound design.

Lenz expresses an artistic project recognized as one of the most original and rigorous in Italian and European research theater characterized by continuous investigative work on contemporary language. In the first phase of his creative journey Lenz reworked the great classical texts, retranscribing its poetic impulses into contemporary visions. The density of performative work is symmetrical to the intensity, exceptionality, uniqueness of the interpreters, non solo ‘attori’ ma reagenti artistici del testo creativo.

In a more recent phase, visual and plastic research is at the center of poetics: the theatrical action is wedged between writing through images and the plastic creation of space, which aims to be an autonomous artistic installation. The performative action is enhanced by the exceptional nature of the performers, creative text artistic reagents.

Dal 1996 Maria Federica Maestri and Francesco Pititto have opened an active dialogue with the international contemporary art scene, through the Natura Dèi Teatri festival dedicated to new artistic research, of which they are the curators. ND'T is a project of international performance productions created for the festival and a place for intellectual reflection on the state of contemporary art. The physical and expressive space in which Lenz's creations are made is crossed by some of the most innovative and rigorous aesthetic experiences in the field of performative creation, European musical and visual. Attention to contemporary creation, the interdisciplinarity of the events presented, a strong rooting in the territory combined with a profound vocation for international performance culture are historical characteristics of Natura Dèi Teatri.

A complex project, denominato Pratiche di Teatro caratterizza Lenz nel campo della formazione teatrale e visuale. Pratiche di Teatro Sociale attiva invece percorsi di sensibilizzazione teatrale, visual, musical which involve the design of integrated laboratories aimed at intellectually and mentally disabled people. This intense training activity is combined with workshops and theatrical activities aimed at schools and universities.

La Fondazione ha la propria sede a Lenz Teatro uno spazio industriale degli anni ’40 – di circa 1000 m2 – located in the historic outskirts of Parma, completely renovated respecting the original architectural typology.