After three years of study, planning and practice, the teenage group Esquilino Junion Theatre Orchestra debuted their original collaboratively-written production "Aspettando" at the Teatro Valle in Rome last month.
The twelve teens who make up the orchestra are "new Italians"—either immigrants or children of immigrants—who mixed the musical instruments and styles of their familys' homelands with text from European writers ranging from Shakespeare to Leopardi, from Beckett to Kafka to create a theatrical whole exploring diversity and unity.
Moni Ovadia, the diversity-award-winning Jewish-Italian actor and musician who envisioned and directed the project, told La Repubblica that the kids "didn't know anything about theatre or music, some didn't even speak Italian, and now they're singing and acting.".
In "Aspettando", the teens recited and sang texts in both Italian and other world languages while playing instruments, including an African Kora, a stringed instrument made from a goard, and a Chinese p'ia'a, a lute played since the third century AD.
EJTO began in 2009 with the support of Fondazione Vodafone, but has grown to include collaborations with NGOs working on migration issues in Rome. Members of the current group come from Eritrea, Romania, China, Turkey and Senegal.
