Teatro del Lemming is an experimental theatre company founded in 1987 by Massimo Munaro and Martino Ferrari. It is funded by the Italian Ministry of Culture since 1997. Winner of many awards including Prize Totola, Prize Piccoli Palcoscenici, the UBU prize Giuseppe Bartolucci and Silver Snowflake at the Sarajevo Winter Festival, Teatro del Lemming is recognized as one of the leading groups of the new Italian and European theatre. In Teatro del Lemming. In 2018, Teatro del Lemming was recognized as a residence Artisti nei territori (artists in the territories) with the project In Metamorfosi: residencies for theatrical research.

Teatro del Lemming believes that artistic residence is the right way to house, plan and record the work process of any theatrical experimentation. Every experimentation on theatrical languages, to fully works and lives, needs broaden times and spaces compared to those offered by the theatrical establishment. Often the traditional hosting model avoids the creation of a fertile bundle between the opera and the hosting territories. It is necessary to find new operational models, new ways to house the theatrical experimentation. Here it is the artistic residencies model, which allows an artist, or a group, to reside in a territory to fully disclose the artistic work and to support the exchange with the hosting community.

The project In Metamorfosi plans the hospitality of artists in residence according to the following axis:

• Support for local and regional artists and groups operating in the experimentation of scenic languages;
• Identification of Italian and European young emerging companies, operating in the experimentation of scenic languages with particular attention to the practice of The Spectator’s Theatre.

The programme is designated for young groups or artists that practice experimental theatre with particular attention to the practice of The Spectator’s Theatre. The practice of The Spectator’s Theatre is a non-exclusive requisite. Only artistic projects that conduct an experimentation with scenic languages, according to one or more points mentioned here, are eligible for selection.
The Spectator’s theatre is all that theatre that:

• is a deeply emotional experience for the audience;
• is not a simple representation but it becomes a personal experience to an event: I don’t watch a show but I experience something;
• is not dedicated for a shapeless crowd (the audience) but it is dedicated to each singular participant;
• is able to redefine the role actor/spectator through their direct relation that actually becomes the focus of the experience;
• Assumed that nowadays, the paradigm of our citizen condition is similar to inert powerless spectators, it considers the audience no more as a nineteenth-century voyeuristic spectator,but as an important part of the play; challenges the passivity of the audience, that becomes the actor of the event: The political moment par excellence is the transformation from the state of being a spectator into the position of an actor (Zygmunt Bauman);
• makes the theatrical event a unique, intimate and unrepeatable experience for each singular participant;
• builds small rituals because it supports a resurge of the ritual significance of theatre, as a sacred, revealing experience, which is the original feature of theatre; gets back to a primal theatrical practice able to initiate people to become citizens of the world; defines the actor’s work like a gift of love towards the spectator, with all the challenge, the mutual bare and the structural risk that this means;
• is able to redefine the use of the theatrical space: the performance is no more in front of me, but it looms me, it is in me and I live in it like in a universe in which I fall;
• is able to redefine the time of the theatrical experience: it starts when the spectator is near to the event and it broadens before its end through the inevitable processing.