Drama expanded, surpassed itself and reasserted its importance at the 10th Festival, interweaving with cinema, dance and music to encompass the various trends animating the contemporary scene.
The prize awarded to Michel Piccoli was intended as a tribute to a great, exquisitely European artist and an approach to the profession of acting that passes through the sectors of stage and screen to find its essential rationale beyond them in a style inseparable from the man himself and his social commitment.
Aided and abetted by Klaus Michael Grüber, Michel Piccoli used the Massimo Bellini Theater in Catania for a production that paid homage not only to Sicily but also to myth, to theater, and to its key places: Piccoli- Pirandello, à partir des Géants de la montagne.
Piccoli was the subject of a symposium entitled Michel Piccoli or the Two-Way Journey in Film and Theater and a selection of the most important movies made by this great French actor was shown.
Heiner Goebbels, winner of the 8th Premio Europa Nuove Realtà Teatrali, presented two productions of exceptionally high level: Max Black, a compendium of epistemology, art, music and philosophy in the form of a musical, visual, verbal, gestural and "fiery" score interpreted by the voice and body of André Wilms, and The Left Hand of Glenn Gould, a performance developed in the course of a workshop held in Germany by Goebbels at the Justus Liebig Universität in Giessen with the participation of grant holders from the multimedia workshop fabrica in Treviso.
The awarding of the Nuove Realtà prize to Alain Platel recognized the untiring efforts of a dancer, choreographer and director who has succeeded in breaking down the barriers between different disciplines (dance, drama, music and circus) and the commitment of an artist capable, together with his collective company Les Ballets C. de la B., of devising and staging productions of the utmost rigor, working also with non-professionals, disadvantaged people or children.
Alain Platel presented Iets op Bach with an ensemble of nine musicians and nine dancers from his company. The dancers of Les Ballets C. de la B., who come from all over the world, won great public acclaim by giving a stark and poetic account of themselves and their lives to music by Bach.
Two symposiums were devoted to the drama of Goebbels and Platel.