Armando Punzo, a shaman in the prison
Naturae - Armando Punzo Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia © Andrea Avezzù Although art lovers know Venice best for its art and architecture biennials and its film festival, La Biennale di Venezia, the organisation responsible for these three events, has also been organising theatre, dance and music festivals every year for years. Especially in the 70s, the Teatro Biennale hosted the most important international representatives of the performing arts of the time, from Robert Wilson to Peter Brook, from The Living Theatre to Jerzy Grotowski. In those years, Ariane Mnouchkine staged L'Âge d'or (The Golden Age) by a canal, John Cage and Merce Cunningham staged their works in Piazza San Marco and Brook in the courtyard of a monastery. Like the Dance and Music Biennials, the Teatro Biennale, instead of taking over the city as it did in the 1970s, has recently been using the 300-400 year old Italian Navy shipyard buildings in the monumental Arsenale area, which the Biennale di Venezi...