OHT - nuvolario - miniature

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“A cloud is only visible while
it is in flux, as it changing, on the move: this is precisely what makes it a thing and also
what prevents it from being a thing at all.” Sadie Plant

“Having one’s head in the clouds” is a phrase that withhold an emotional state whilst defining it. Often, to clarify a feeling, words are woven into fleeting metaphors – cloud-like images that capture inner stirrings. August Strindberg was fascinated by the clouds in the Stockholm sky; for many years he observed them, took notes on them and translated them into his chamber theatre. An intimate theatre, designed for small spaces, which captured the atmosphere.

nuvolario #miniature attempts to bridge the gap to the sky with atmospheric sets that turn 19th Century romanticism on its head, presenting clouds that are unexpectedly earthly. A scientific minitheatre that shrinks the world, revealing material clouds, made of organic matter, inorganic substances and everything they manage to vaporise. Defined in nephological atlases as Pyrocumulus or Cumulonimbus Flammagenitus [abbr. PyroCbFg], these are clouds that lift the earth and all its components into the air.

By transforming the external landscape into an inner one, Filippo Andreatta is a mangiafuoco who sets in motion a scientific theatre in which atmospheric miniatures restore the theatre to its evanescence and materiality. The architecture of the Valli Italian-style theatre in Reggio Emilia is scaled down to an intimate space where the representational distance is burnt in minute scenographic and celestial artifices.

The soundscape of this miniature theatre is Melodie by composer Louis Andriessen, a work in which piano and flute pursue a perfect unison that is constantly challenged by timbral fluctuations and subtle rhythmic variations. In this futile endeavour, near-success is the furthest one can go: an approximation, a movement towards something that remains ultimately elusive.

nuvolario is a project that looks upwards, an observation of the transformative power of clouds in the most illusory mechanisms; seeing what is not there. Relegated to the domain of vagueness by their tendency to conceal celestial references, clouds have long been perceived as the enemy of clear thinking, the nemesis of philosophers and scientists. Yet they have always deciphered reality by revealing the deceptive transparency of the air and signalling other atmospheric phenomena; an aspect that, combined with their shape-shifting nature, has made them the obsession of painters, photographers, meteorologists and the military.

Filippo Andreatta explores the elusive vertigo of celestial landscapes and their precipitate into our present. Visible only from afar, clouds are the rare moment when the atmosphere materialises, a taxonomy of sky forms getting through the stage and its celestial artifices.

Evanescent as a cloud, the project constantly changes shape while remaining unchanged in its name: nuvolario.

year

2026

time

0:27:00.0

genre

chamber-theatre

press

not yet

credits

NUVOLARIO #miniatura
by Filippo Andreatta

music Melodie by Louis Andriessen

> directing, set and writings Filippo Andreatta
> maquette and decorations Nadezhda Simeonova
> technical supervision and care Cosimo Ferrigolo
> dramaturgical research Veronica Franchi

> pianoforte Bruna Di Virgilio
> flute Verena Barié

> administrator Lucrezia Stenico
> producer Rebecca Sivieri
> international promotion Valentina Bertolino
> photographer Giacomo Bianco
> maquette collaboration Luca Molinari
> animal spirit yún (云)

> production Office for a Human Theatre
> co-production festival Aperto / Fondazione I Teatri Reggio Emilia, La Contrada Teatro Stabile di Trieste
> residencies Saari Residence / Kone foundation (FI), Villa Manin / La Contrada Trieste, Socìetas / Teatro Comandini Cesena, Scuola Piccola Zattere Venezia, Teatro alla Cartiera Rovereto
> with the support of MiC, Fondazione Caritro, Provincia Autonoma di Trento, Comune di Rovereto, Socìetas as part of MIC/RE-R project “Artist Residencies in the Territories 2025–27”

production history

22-26.II.2026 > Villa Manin Trieste > residenza + open studio
07-30.IV.2026 > Socìetas / Teatro Comandini Cesena > residenza + open studio
08-19.VII.2026 > Scuola Piccola Zattere, Venezia > residenza + open studio
10-11.X.2026 > festival Aperto / Fondazione I Teatri Reggio Emilia > premiere
05-06.X.2026 > MUSE Museo delle Scienze, Trento

nuvolario #miniatura