The exhibition presents some testimonies of the extraordinary experience of the Orestiadi di Gibellina, an international review of theater, music, poetry, visual arts born in 1982.

An uninterrupted path that makes it one of the longest-running festivals in Italy with more than 400 shows produced and hosted, a conspicuous heritage whose relevance makes the Orestiadi a unique cultural experiment.

The theater in Gibellina has always played a more complex role and function than that of a simple theatrical event, relying on collective and historical memory. It was the response of Ludovico Corrao, mayor of Gibellina, to the tragedy of the earthquake of '68 to transform tragedy into hope, to give life to what was left in memory, to save from oblivion what could or could be buried twice. A tension that materialized in the involvement of the population on stage and of the local workers for the realization of the sets and costumes created by the great artists, in a continuous dialogue between the performing arts and the visual arts, present in the performance system of the city itself with its architecture and his works en plein air, many of which were born as theatrical sets.

At the “Teatro dei Ruderi”, under the rubble of Gibellina, the first shows of the Orestiadi are staged, a scene that still gives life to what is left in the memory, which saves from oblivion what was in danger of being buried twice. A few years later Alberto Burri covered the rubble collected in blocks with white concrete, creating the Cretto, one of the greatest works of land-art in the world. The Cretto also becomes a huge scenic place that welcomes unforgettable shows also thanks to the strong emotional impact of the landscape in which the strength of the invisible, of what could no longer be seen, and therefore the hidden, was most important with the theater. evident.