© InfoMigrants
© InfoMigrants

At the 19th edition of the Genoa Suq Festival and Theatre of Dialogue project, many first and second generation migrants will take the stage alongside established actors and directors in a special cultural event. This year's festival, which will take place at Genoa's Old Port from June 15-25, is dedicated to the theme "People, Traveling and Staying".

It aims to focus on the stories of those who have come and gone, those who have stayed, and those who are still on the journey, searching for a place to put down roots or simply rest for a while. As part of the various festival initiatives, migrants of diverse ages who are residents from about twenty communities in the Genoa area will participate in a cultural project focused on housing, called "My House is Where I Am". The project will take place from May through July with writing and theatre workshops to create a show. The project won a national grant from the "MigrArti" programme sponsored by the Italian Culture Ministry to facilitate awareness regarding the many cultures and diverse communities of people living in Italy. Carla Peirolero, director of the Suq Festival, said the cultural project was developed together with a network of associations, and it was awarded a grant together with 35 other Italian projects selected from 400 candidates."With the African, Latin American and Eastern European communities, we will compare our ideas of home, of what it means to put down roots and pull up roots," Peirolero said. Some of the associations in the network of those participating in the project include Maboto, Luanda, Italian-Ethiopian-Eritrean Solidarity, ACLI, ARCI, the D'Albertis Castle Museum, and the Stabile Theatre. About fifteen migrants will participate in the theatre workshops, seminars, and meetings together with professional actors to create the show titled "My Home is Where I Am", which will be performed at the D'Albertis Castle Museum from July 28-30.The show will include excerpts from the eponymous novel by the Italian writer of Somali origin Igiaba Scego. The Suq Festival will conclude on June 30 with a performance on the cliffs of Ventimiglia, on the border with France. "We're working on a theatre performance together with the Balzi Rossi Prehistoric Museum based on the tale 'The Long Voyage' by Leonardo Sciascia," festival director Peirolero said."The story speaks of Sicilians who pay a fortune to board a boat to emigrate from the island to America, who are abandoned after a series of misadventures and an 11-day journey, just 10 kilometres from their former home. To us it seems like an essential story for relating the migrants of the past to those of today. We've already had traffickers here in Italy," she said.


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