FREELY – a Popular School of Writing

LIBERAMENTE – a Popular School of Writing is a series of meetings that Stefano Massini conducts just as in his shows with his usual narrative touch: ironic and disorienting, popular, incisive and moving. It is not a course, it is not a school in the traditional sense, but a cultural opportunity open to everyone. A unique format of its kind, conceived and led by the artistic director of Teatro della Toscana. After the extraordinary success of past seasons, which recorded record numbers, LIBERAMENTE_ Scuola Popolare di Scrittura by and with Stefano Massini returns, a special project of the Ministry of Culture. Manuale di Educazione Sentimentale is its version for secondary school students. Not a real writing course, but a necessary dialogue to decipher emotions, to better understand one’s needs. Following the lesson of Dario Fo, LIBERAMENTE renews a conception of theatre understood as a collective, political and popular act, capable of breaking down the barrier between stage and audience to make the community the active protagonist of the scene. An invitation to write and share stories, dreams and passions to give life to a collective script. Massini leads the meetings just as in his shows with his usual narrative touch: ironic and disorienting, popular, incisive and moving. LIBERAMENTE is not a course, it is not a school in the traditional sense, but a cultural opportunity open to everyone. The events are independent and separate from each other; attendance is not compulsory. Each person may freely decide whether to participate in one or more meetings. Participating in one meeting does not entitle one to attend subsequent ones. LIBERAMENTE, therefore, absolutely does not intend to be a training course for new authors, but rather an opportunity for all those who feel they have something to express, to share, or perhaps simply to put into words, with no obligation and without any grade. Thus, LIBERAMENTE, in every sense the word entails, starting from the fact that the School takes place with open doors to anyone, without exclusions and without prerequisites, with full free access for anyone who wishes to attend, scheduled (on Sunday mornings) at a time that for almost everyone is free from work and weekly routine. Then, the adverb LIBERAMENTE can be distilled into the single imperative to show up at the School with free minds, free of prejudices and formal cages, open to listening and above all to dialogue, to provocation, to questioning opinions and points of view, because writing always implies a space for self-criticism and inner examination.