Since its debut in 1956, the Plautus Festival has brought the art of theater of Sarsina through its fifteen wonderful events.
The performances, which focus on the repertoire of Ancient Drama and Classical Theater, take place in the enchanting Plautus Arena. Some shows will also be staged in the Historic Center, specifically in Piazza San Francesco and Piazzetta Lucio Pisone, adjacent to the renowned Piazza Plauto.
For the occasion, Piazza Plauto is transformed into an open-air theater, offering spectators the chance to explore the Historic Center and delve into Sarsina's ancient history. All performances, whether in the Plautus Arena or in the historic center, commence at 9:15 pm. Artistic direction by Edoardo Siravo.
⇒ Find out the full program of Plautus Festival 2025
When: Sunday July 6th
Where: Piazza San Francesco
A show intended for very different audiences in terms of age and education, linked to the motif of the forest as a place within which one gets lost in fear and courageously goes in search of oneself.
In fact, thanks to the imaginative power of figure theater (shadows, puppets, marionettes) and an evocative vocal and sound universe, the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood gradually comes to life. Ages: 5 and up.
When: Friday, July 12th
Where: Lucio Pisone Square
The life of Artemisia Gentileschi narrated by herself. A play that tells the triumphs, the defeats and the struggle of the artist against a system that would have her at home in the kitchen, taking care of her daughter, and that narrates her rebellion against the system through painting, going beyond every abyss of violence suffered to ascend to the paradise of Art. An answer that shines with the female victory in a world governed by men.
When: Friday, July 18th
Where: Arena Plautina
Giovanni Scifoni brings to the stage an intense and visionary monologue on Saint Francis, reinterpreted as a pop star of the Middle Ages. With live ancient music, the show blends theater, spirituality and comedy, retracing the life of the saint as a revolutionary artist and performer. A poetic journey between the sermon to the pigs and the Canticle of the Creatures, up to the confrontation with death. A powerful story that unites the sacred, the profane and existential reflection
When: Sunday, July 20th
Where: Lucio Pisone square
When you remain in the darkness, it is best to stop and strain your ears to listen. And here personal stories and ancient stories emerge. Among these, the most Greek and blindest tragedy that exists: Oedipus. A story that brings darkness to misdeeds, where the protagonist blinds himself and two brothers make war on each other blinded by hatred, while the only one who sees clearly is Tiresias, the blind seer..
When: Tuesday, July 22nd
Where: Lucio Pisone Square
To what extent is revenge justice? It is a timeless question, unfortunately more relevant than ever.
When: Wednesday, July 23rd
Where: Plautina Arena
by Titus Maccius Plautus
How many times do we think we are facing someone and instead we are facing someone else, making our assessments wrong? Or vice versa: how often are we not up to the roles that others give us? This now happens both in real life, everyday life, and (if not above all) in digital life, that of social media.
When: Friday, July 25th
Where: Piazzetta Lucio Pisone
The show is a set of visual and sound stories staged by the students of the last cycle of the EIMCD - Ècole Internationale de Mime Corporel Dramatique of Paris, directed by Natalie Stadelmann and Ivan Bacciocchi.
When: Tuesday, July 29th
Where: Plautina Arena
by William Shakespeare
Unpleasant, uncompromising, foul-mouthed and fundamentalist. This is Caterina, the Taming of the Shrew. Caterina would like to rewrite the rules, say no to her mother and her scoundrel husband: they make her pay for it. The humiliation is total. On one side of the stage, people laugh, dress up, send each other kisses and declarations of love; on the other, only violence is practiced. The worst happens when the door closes and we can no longer see. Behind there, no Prince Charming arrives to save you: of Caterina, that fiery and rebellious girl, who dreamed of love, there is no longer any trace.
When: Friday August 1st
Where: Plautina Arena
Translation into the Romagnola language by Aldo Spallicci from Plautus' Pseudolus. Trapulòn is a comedy that is solidly interwoven, though without gravity, investigating the vernacular language of the places where Plautus was born, thanks also to the support of the stage music composed by Francesco Balilla Pratella in 1947. The project proposed and created by Bottega del Teatro is, therefore, a unique event of national importance.
When: Sunday, August 3rd
Where: Plautina Arena
by Luca Cairati
Unfinished Comedy is a fantastic journey undertaken by the Masks of the Commedia dell’Arte in the wake of the surreal plots of Gianni Rodari.
When: Wednesday, August 6th
Where: Plautina Arena
by Marilù Oliva
The Odyssey of Women is a show based on the novel by Marilù Oliva, “The Odyssey told by Penelope, Circe, Calipso and the others” (2020), a rewriting of the famous Homeric poem that became a best-seller, narrated from the point of view of the women who encountered the hero
When: Saturday, August 9th
Where: Arena Plautina
by Ben Jonson Written
by Ben Jonson in 1606, and staged the same year at the Globe Theatre in London, the comedy is a great classic of English theatre and represents the masterpiece of an author who, together with Shakespeare and Marlowe, gave life to the period of greatest splendor of British theatre: the Elizabethan theatre
When: Tuesday, August 12th
Where: Plautina Arena
by Euripides
A dark and anguished story with an apparently happy ending, this tragedy is one of Euripides' most successful dramatic works. Here, even more than in Iphigenia in Aulis, the conventionality of Euripides' "deus ex machina" emerges powerfully, the inadequacy of the Olympian gods and the solitude of man, abandoned to his choices and his conscience.
When: Saturday, August 16th
Where: Plautina Arena
One of the most performed plots in Paris in the early 1700s, here revived for the first time in the modern era, Il muto per spavento represents a great homage to the Commedia dell'Arte and to the all-Italian ability to make a virtue of necessity.
