Ilva Football Club

On Thursday, February 19, at the Teatro Dino Buzzati, the theatrical performance Ilva Football Club will take place, part of the "Giovedì giovani" theater series.

“Once upon a time, there was a soccer field in the middle of the neighborhood, one of those outskirts fields that mark your knees for a lifetime, those with goals made of innocent pipes, nets stolen from fishermen, and along the metal fence, stretches of extinguished cigarette butts keeping company with the fans. Those were the fields where everyone, or almost everyone, dreamed of becoming soccer players. In that arena for gladiators, there played a team of eleven men, who stepped onto the field without pretensions and who had no idea of the fate that awaited them. This is the story of an incredible run, of an impossible goal at the last minute, and of the dream called Ilva Football Club.”

Ilva Football Club speaks of a dream, a dream twice the size of the city, a dream that slowly and inexorably crumbles and collides with reality. The story of the largest steelworks in Europe intertwines with the legend of this small team born right under the chimneys of Ilva, to give voice to the many stories lived in Taranto. Stories of struggle between health and work, between hope and disillusionment, between dream and reality. Through the sports metaphor, the poetry of images, and the truth of testimonies, Ilva Football Club tells the story of a disposable city, which today is Taranto but could be another city tomorrow, showing us how much what happens concerns us much more than we imagine.

Usine Baug & Fratelli Maniglio
with Fabio Maniglio, Luca Maniglio, Ermanno Pingitore, Stefano Rocco, Claudia Russo
lights and technical Emanuele Cavalcanti
production Campo Teatrale
with the support of IDRA Teatro
and TRAC – Puglia residency center as part of the CURA 2022 project
Inspired by the novel of the same name “Ilva Football Club” by F. Colucci and L. D’Alò