Rossobastardo live
The idea was born in 2007: traveling to New York with friends, we visit the LaMama Theater and meet Ellen Stuart, the source of inspiration for this project.
Ellen Stewart was born in 1919 in Louisiana but grew up in Chicago; although at the time Illinois law prevented women of color from attending design schools, she managed to fulfill her dream of becoming a designer in New York. Among her closest friends she has many artists, always looking fora space where they can test themselves and present their works.
Ellen is also looking for a space to exhibit her creations and she senses that by helping them she would also help herself.
In the 1960s Cafè La MaMatakes shape, one of the most important Off-Broadway spaces, where artists marginalized from the entertainment system can experiment with freedom and creativity.
A choral project in which people of different languages, cultures and experiences can freely express their genius and support each other.
The theater has low ticket prices, so that profits are practically non-existent: Ellen supports her “family” of artists with what she earns by designing clothes and offers hospitality whenever she can to those who tread her stage. This will be a springboard for many artists at the start of a brilliant career: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Lane, Sam Shepard, Israel Horowitz and many many others.
The idea of Rossobastardo Live traces the essential characteristics of the New York project: visibility for new artists paired with our irreverent Rossobastardo wine which, at the launch of the initiative, appeared on the international market.
Una winning formula of neo-solidarity patronage where, in contexts of great communication, the opportunities are mutual, an experiment on the possibility of imagining, even in our country, a different relationship between business and art.
In my mind, the Rossobastardo Live venue is a place where no one is a stranger and anyone – artist or spectator – can feel at home, where to build sincere friendships over a glass of good wine.
The proposal takes the form of a traveling Fringe Festival that follows the main international artistic events.
Rossobastardo Live made its debut in Spoleto in 2009 on the occasion of the Festival dei Due Mondi: for two weeks a small venue in via del Mercato hosts over 100 artists from all over the world who perform for free in the only non-paid show of the Festival. During the performances, spectators can taste our wines, with small platters of typical Umbrian products. The venue immediately becomes the meeting point for the artists of the main festival, who give life to exciting jam sessions, inevitably also involving the spectators. It is a great success with audiences and critics, which brings Rossobastardo Live to the Narni Black Festival, the New York Dance Festival and the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, just to name a few.
Now the goal is to replicate the format through the franchising formula, so that the possibilities multiply for everyone.
