How will little Dorothy reach the great Wizard of Oz? And what to do with the strange tin man: accept his company or take another path? The audience will choose the ending of this story. "OZz" is the first experiment in digital theater by the Valdarno-based company KanterStrasse.
OZz is the first experiment in digital theater by the Valdarno-based company KanterStrasse. The show is a contemporary and whimsical reinterpretation of the famous novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" by Lyman Frank Baum, which recounts the adventures of Dorothy, a Kansas girl who suddenly, carried away by a cyclone, finds herself in a magical and unknown world full of unlikely characters. To return home she will have to overcome numerous trials and fend for herself in her encounters with fantastic creatures. As traveling companions she will have a mindless scarecrow, a heartless tin man, and a wimpy lion.
What happens, however, is decided by the audience. In fact, the show is enjoyed from a screen - and is therefore also suitable for multimedia whiteboards in classrooms - and viewers watch the live streaming as if in a large virtual theater. From there they are called upon to decide from time to time what they want to see happen: they can choose for the protagonist to do one action instead of another, to follow the original plot, interact with a character or even take a peek behind the scenes to discover some little secret of the staging. "It's not theater, it's not cinema, it's not a video game," reads the promotional video for OZz. But, in the end, it is a bit of all three.
Created to be staged in theaters, the persistence of the pandemic then prompted the production to attempt this experiment for the first time, making an interactive video set in some of Valdarno's iconic places, such as the balze, the forests of Vallombrosa and Figline's Teatro Garibaldi. Precisely in collaboration with the Garibaldi Theater, last December OZz had been broadcast free of charge on the website of the municipality of Figline and Incisa Valdarno, and in April it was virtually staged in schools in the municipal area, involving more than 650 pupils who participated in the show from the Lim, the interactive multimedia whiteboard.
OZz is a show produced by KanterStrasse and Straligut Teatro with the collaboration of Blanket Studio and the contribution of Comune di Figline e Incisa Valdarno, Regione Toscana and Publiacqua spa, directed by Simone Martini and Lorenzo Donnini, with Elisa Vitiello, Simone Martini and Alessio Martinoli.
Reservations required online or by phone at 0559125304 (office hours: Mon-Wed-Fri 9 a.m. to 1 p. m.; Tues and Thurs also 3 p. m. to 6 p . m.) - free admission
As a reminder, starting next Aug. 6, in compliance with national regulations, access to the events will require possession of the Covid-19 Green Certification, the so-called "green pass" attesting to Covid-19 vaccination, a negative result of a rapid molecular or antigenic test performed within the past 48 hours, or recovery from Covid-19 within the past six months. More information here.
KanterStrasse is a regional theater company and artistic residency based at Le Fornaci Theater in Terranuova Bracciolini. It works in programming, training and production with a focus on new contemporary languages.(www.kanterstrasse.it)
SCENE PHOTOS: by Mario Lanini