TBQvoices is a means of reflecting on and discussing issues that “strike” us at the present moment, a present moment that also meets and detects the distance of the past. Examining “the right now” to be able to think of “what has always been”; and vice versa taking a look at “what has always been” to adequately figure out “the right now”. To pay attention to contemporary events involves constantly facing up to changes in time and space, not conforming to given opinions, allowing disorientation.
TBQvoices addresses issues with artists involved in theatre, with organisers and managers of cultural institutions, with and in social meeting-places in Quarticciolo, in the city and in the world.

In this Issue #0 we asked the question What time is now? to: Luca Bergamo (Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Cultural Development), Chiara Bersani (writer and performer) and Marta Montanini (Phd from Turin University), Ilenia Caleo (performer, activist and independent researcher), Paolo Emilio Cenciarelli (photographer), Carlotta Garlanda (project manager), Roberto Latini (author, actor and director, Fortebraccio Theatre), Franco Lorenzoni (primary school teacher, writer, founder of Casa-Laboratorio di Cenci), Mario Martone (director), Ermanna Montanari (writer and actress, founder of Teatro delle Albe) and Marco Martinelli (director, founder of Teatro delle Albe), Omar Rajeh (dancer, choreographer and artistic director of Maqamot/Lebanon). With their words we have tried to put together a “chorus of voices”:

– Children must always adapt. No boy or girl chooses his/her parents, home, city, and I believe not even the planet where their life has flowered.

 – On entering the neighbourhood of Quarticciolo I experienced its centripetal force, due to its movement. Movement of its inhabitants, citizens; buildings and environment.

– Even so, many people had never thought of going to see what existed beyond the wall. Well, beyond the wall is the city of the future.

 – Will there be an after? In the past it would always have been taken for granted there would be an after […] because being on the edge, between the sky and the darkness, is already an invocation to the dark deity of the future.

– “IT IS NOT THE TIME” of speed, of synapsis, not of anguish, not of conquest.
it is not the time to look for destinations, travelling is not important anymore, neither are images, not the horizon to medicate shortsightedness, […].

 – It is time for actions to follow the words, the declarations and the manifestos.
However, yesterday, the day before yesterday, last week, last month and in previous years also then it was necessary for actions to follow words.

 – However, in one way or another, the evidence of the total fragility of the area is triggering a process where people are standing up for their rights and – hopefully- liaising. This will certainly help to indicate new viewpoints and different approaches, […].

– I do not think there could be the opportunity to recover, it is necessary to invent a different model of development.
The event of this global epidemic may bring about a new consideration of the relationship between public and private sectors.

– Instead, faced with fear, the world has divided itself into smaller parts. There are those who have remained, those who have not even considered the idea of moving, but I continue to look at those who take a side step saying “you have to understand”.

– The real fight of culture is to formulate a new perception beyond the fixed labels of power and domination. An ecological as well as a human discourse. One that fight all the other ‘viruses’ that were contaminating our lives and relationships…[…] We think of political prisoners, of artists that were banned and prosecuted, of cultural centers closed, of individuals living in poverty and fear, of communities under threat and deprived of their own free choices of life.

– Reducing production, reducing production is not lessening growth or poverty but becoming aware that it’s not necessary to produce so much, the same income can be available, the same resources doing less.

– What will we do when the theatres and the festivals reopen? We should keep them closed an extra day. Take this time for a collective exercise in going on strike. Interruption. Shutdown. To renegotiate the conditions. It is not possible to give advice to the world. Moreover, it hardly ever takes any notice.