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LETTERE MERIDIANE — “TEATRO-EDICOLA” OF SAN SEVERO CONQUERS THE WORLD SOURCE: https://www.letteremeridiane.org/2026/10/il-teatro-edicola-di-san-severo-conquista-il-mondo/?fbclid=IwY2xjawU4oqFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mAXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR5rVEwYs6UUXg7v-P0SyIQ_DRb_F6ZiY58OcseYoV4J7atcTiERnhWaqKM2pw_aem_Njle1jq1XLzHr93KLBUcVA After “Broadway World”, the “Los Angeles Journal”, “The Psychologist (British Psychological Association)” and Hollywood Beat Magazine, its “academic consecration” has now arrived courtesy of Stanford University. As I have already emphasised in my article on the revival of the GIO Festival in Foggia, celebrated by BroadwayWorld for the world stage premiere of the Giordano’s opera Marina (1888), the province of Foggia has long ceased to be peripheral. It happens when it finds an idea that shifts the coordinates: well, in San Severo, 40 kilometres from Foggia, it has happened again. Only this time an orchestra was not needed; six chairs were enough. The celebrated Teatro-Edicola of San Severo artistic director Francesco Gravino of the theatre company Foyer ’97 has been featured in the academic journal “Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)” as an academic case study. The news, relayed on 19 September 2026 by ANSA Nazionale, looked like a misprint. Then it became clear that it was not. SSIR, an award-winning publication covering multisectoral solutions to global problems, included the project in its Dispatches section with the reportage “The Six-Seat Revolution”. It is the inverse trajectory to that of the GIO Festival: not a forgotten opera returning to a grand historic Italian horseshoe theatre, but an entire theatre reborn inside a disused place, forgotten by man. There are moments when past and future intertwine to create something visionary, innovative, artistically “revolutionary”: San Severo experienced one of those moments on the morning of 27 March 2026, during World Theatre Day, when the shutter of a newsstand closed for six years in Via Matteo Tondi was reopened “not to sell newspapers, but to offer stirring stories”, to quote Gravino’s motto. The idea of the visionary Francesco Gravino, artistic director, stage director and actor of the San Severo company Foyer ’97, active for at least 30 years in Capitanata, centred on the kiosk, hexagonal in metal and glass, granted free of charge by its owner Pino Frau, by now an urban relic created by the publishing crisis of the early 2000s: today in Italy active newsstands have fallen from about 35,000 in 2005 to about 20,000 in 2024, a decline of 42.8%. Gravino and eleven other actors restructured it in two weeks of work, without institutional funding, and transformed it into what is now under examination by the London commission of Guinness World Records as the “world’s smallest theatre”. The formula is deliberately austere: six spectators at a time outside, actors inside at less than a metre’s distance, 15-minute performances, continuous rotation from 11:00 to 20:45, texts ranging from Goldoni to Chekhov, from Ibsen to Dacia Maraini. On the door a QR code with an original theatrical warning: “Warning! This QR code transforms passers-by into actors. Scan only if ready.” The numbers immediately showed that it was no boutade: more than 60 people in a single afternoon, three inaugural days that sold out. But above all a positive echo that went beyond the borders of San Severo. “Broadway World” (just as in the previous case of the GIO Festival), the world’s most influential theatre criticism outlet with over 5.5 million monthly views, devoted exclusive coverage to it on 27 April 2026: “An Abandoned Italian Newsstand Just Became the World’s Smallest Theatre”. Not a mere listing, but an analysis: “There is no foyer, there is no balcony, there is no grid. There is barely a wing. What there is is something almost unrecognisable as an evening at the theatre, and for that very reason it is all the more powerful.” “Broadway World” captured Gravino’s manifesto idea: “This is a theatre of proximity. In an era of digital distance, we are putting human contact back at the centre,” framing it as “More than a clever exercise in site-specific theatre. It is a reappropriation.” All of this, in a Mezzogiorno of Italy often narrated only in terms of organised crime and marginalisation. To that seal of approval was added another, even more disorienting for a newsstand in San Severo: the “Los Angeles Journal”, one of the most influential publications on the West Coast for the performing arts. On 12 May 2026, it headlined thus: “San Severo’s Teatro-Edicola as an Innovative Model for Los Angeles Theaters?” opening as follows: “In a city in southern Italy that Hollywood has never heard of, a theatre director has just built the smallest stage in the world: six seats, fifteen minutes, zero distance. Los Angeles should pay attention.” The “Los Angeles Journal” does not indulge in folklore, but places the kiosk in Via Matteo Tondi alongside the prestigious 1,600-seat Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, the Pantages of Broadway in Hollywood, the 99-seat plan of Rogue Machine, the Odyssey, the Victory Theatre and the Hollywood Fringe. It even recalls Ethan Marks’s Electrical Box Theatre, a veritable electrical box lined with red velvet in downtown Los Angeles, to argue that Gravino has taken to the extreme the question Los Angeles has been asking itself for decades: How small can a stage become before it ceases to be a stage? And it recognizes the San Severo urban model: almost zero cost, two weeks of work and six chairs, in return for immediate provincial, regional and national media coverage, recognition by the San Severo’s Municipal Administration, and a format exportable anywhere. Then, the third American piece came from “Hollywood Beat Magazine” on 20 April 2026: Six seats. Fifteen minutes. One actor. No stage. The magazine recounts the kiosk in Via Tondi left disused for almost six years, the contemporary six-seat cultural outpost, placing Francesco Gravino in a distinguished genealogy: Richard Schechner and environmental theatre, Jerzy Grotowski and poor theatre, Nicolas Bourriaud and relational aesthetics. But it closes with pragmatism: it is not a thesis, it is fixing a street corner, that is, repairing an urban street corner by asking not how large a theatre can become, but how small it must become again to recover its original power. And finally, the celebrated London-based “The Psychologist”, the journal of the “British Psychological Society (BPS)”, the oldest psychological society in the world, transformed the Teatro-Edicola into a scientific case study: on 30 July 2026 it published “The world’s smallest theatre — and Psychologists’ next act”, starting from the same detail, the morning of 27 March when the metal shutter of the hexagonal kiosk in Via Tondi reopened after six years, six people inside, an actor at less than a metre’s distance beginning Chekhov. It describes the formula: six spectators, 15 minutes, 11 actors over 10 hours, from Goldoni to Euripides, inside a kiosk where the fourth wall does not break because architecturally it never existed. But the BPS goes a step further: it cites the 2025 studies by Damien Gabriel in IBRO Neuroscience Reports, that live performance generates measurably stronger emotional and physiological activation than video, and introduces Edward Hall’s proxemics: below one metre is intimate space, reserved for doctors, close friends, lovers. In that one-square-metre space, the actor’s breath is audible, micro-expressions legible, the self-other boundary becomes permeable. The Teatro-Edicola “does not make theatre better, it makes it inevitable”. And it is here that one understands why Stanford is studying it as an academic case study in social innovation, not as a case of artistic originality. In Italy, meanwhile, the national media circuit had already picked up the phenomenon: RaiNews — TG2 Storie brought it to RaiDue at midnight on 19 April. RTL 102.5 devoted space to the format conceived by Gravino and developed by Foyer ’97 in the heart of San Severo in Via Tondi, defining it as a permanent micro-stage capable of bringing theatre into public space. ANSA.it, Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, La Repubblica, TG2000, Radio Capital, Swiss RSI, ANSA Brazil and many others followed. And for the record: Fiorello praised it in La Pennicanza as an artistic case inspired by his Edicola Fiore, and Biagio Antonacci, on his tour in the Augustan amphitheatre of Lucera, made a “fact-finding” stop at the Teatro-Edicola singing the celebrated and nostalgic Iris in front of an audience certainly larger than the “six seats”. Francesco Gravino’s theatre company Foyer ’97 was not born yesterday: behind it lie the Teatro-Cantina of 2016, the underground theatre, and in 2011 a performance on the bell tower of a church in the centre of San Severo at 45 metres high. The Teatro-Edicola completes, in Gravino’s words, “the entire vertical extension of theatre: underground, street level, rooftop”. And it is preparing for its thirtieth anniversary in 2027 aiming to purchase the kiosk to make it permanent, exporting the “San Severo Model” to Rome, Lucca, and to the festivals of Santarcangelo and Todi. As with the GIO Festival, someone might dare to claim that it is merely a stunt, but when BroadwayWorld places you alongside the Los Angeles Opera House, the “Los Angeles Journa”l proposes you as a model for Hollywood, “Hollywood Beat Magazine” reads you through Grotowski and the “British Psychological Society” uses you to explain mirror neurones, it is no longer a stunt but an excellent artistic and academic positioning. To those who still whisper that Foggia and Capitanata are provincial, the answer is now written on two opposite and complementary fronts: on 5 June in Foggia a 138-year-old opera found the stage again at the Giordano ending up on BroadwayWorld; on 27 March in San Severo a 4-square-metre kiosk invented a stage that did not exist, ending up at Stanford, in Los Angeles, in Hollywood and in London. The periphery, when it has a precise idea, becomes the centre. Even with six chairs. Luciano Magaldi Sardella

"NEWS GARGANO": A KIOSK FOR A THEATRE: IN SAN SEVERO IT CAN BE DONE, AND ITS ECHO EXTENDS BEYOND ITALY SOURCE: https://www.newsgargano.com/unedicola-per-teatro-a-san-severo-si-puo-e-sconfina-litalia/ SAN SEVERO (FG) - Theatre in San Severo is reborn from less than two square metres and six chairs, transmuting a symbol of urban blight into a small international cause célèbre. The virtuous enterprise has been revived by the company Foyer '97, under the artistic direction of Francesco Gravino, protagonist of a project of cultural regeneration that is now transcending the confines of the Province of Foggia. At the heart of the intervention lies the reclamation of an abandoned newsstand in Via Tondi, for years a disused space and now restored to the city in an unprecedented guise. Where once there was a lowered shutter, theatre is now made: but six spectators at a time, actors at but a few paces from their audience, and performances of brief duration, in a direct and radical commerce between stage and city. The experiment, inaugurated on 27th March, has yielded figures that bespeak a tangible cultural need. More than sixty persons attended the performances in a single afternoon, and the three days of the inaugural season were sold out, demonstrating that proximity and quality may yet generate community even in the most residual of spaces. Yet the story of San Severo has swiftly outgrown its local boundaries. In September 2026, the Stanford Social Innovation Review dedicates to the project the reportage "The Six-Seat Revolution", authored by Luciano Magaldi Sardella, researcher, academic and international journalist from Orta Nova of Sanseverese maternal lineage. The work is described by SSIR as: "A theater director transformed an abandoned newsstand into a radically new theatrical experience that is helping to revive the historic center of a Southern Italian town." The Apulian experience is observed not merely for its theatrical originality, but as a replicable paradigm of low-cost social innovation and urban regeneration, capable of activating cultural capital without recourse to grand structures or lavish investment. "One does not require grand theatres to transform a quarter of a city. What is required is a sound idea and the courage to restore to the collectivity a space that has lost its function," emphasised the artistic director Francesco Gravino. "Teatro Edicola was conceived to demonstrate that a locus of encounter and culture may arise anywhere, even within two square metres. That this endeavour should now be studied at an international level, and that enquiries should arrive from cities such as Lucca and Rome, is confirmation that we are upon the right path." The valorisation and preservation of the urban and cultural fabric must inevitably proceed through the creative reclamation of forsaken places. From a derelict newsstand with scarcely six seats to a project capable of commanding international attention: sometimes, to regenerate a city, one need not build, but re-inhabit.

FROM THE STREETS OF SAN SEVERO TO THE "STANFORD SOCIAL INNOVATION REVIEW": "TEATRO EDICOLA" BECOMES AN INTERNATIONAL CASE STUDY SOURCE: https://www.sanseverocitta.it/dalle-strade-di-san-severo.../ SAN SEVERO (FG) - Six persons enter a newsstand. Before them there are no newspapers, periodicals, or tobacco, but rather a theatrical stage of less than two square metres. The actors stand but a few paces from the spectators, with scarcely any separation betwixt performer and beholder. It is thus that a place abandoned for years in San Severo hath been restored to life. And today that modest theatrical experiment hath come under the glare of international attention. This is the history of the Teatro Edicola, the project realised by the company Foyer '97, under the artistic direction of Francesco Gravino, which hath transformed a former newsstand in Via Tondi into one of the smallest stages hitherto conceived. The project commenced on 27th March last with a formula at once simple and singularly original: six seats, a most circumscribed scenic space, and performances of but a few minutes' duration. A minimal distance betwixt public and interpreters that doth wholly transfigure the traditional relation between spectator and theatre. The wager, however, was immediately rewarded by the public. More than sixty persons attended the performances in a single afternoon, and the three days of the inaugural season recorded a complete sold-out. From a local experiment, the Teatro Edicola hath thus become a case capable of attracting attention far beyond the confines of the Province of Foggia. In September 2026, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the journal of Stanford University, shall publish upon its website and in its Fall 2026 print edition the reportage "The Six-Seat Revolution", authored by Dr Luciano Magaldi Sardella and overseen editorially by Deputy Editor David V. Johnson. The interest of the American review doth not concern merely the originality of the theatrical proposition. The Teatro Edicola is, indeed, observed as a potential exemplar of low-cost social innovation and urban regeneration. The notion is particularly compelling in a country such as Italy, wherein numerous newsstands have ceased their activity and risk becoming vacant interstices within the urban fabric. The question, at bottom, is simple: may a place born to vend newspapers become anew a locus of encounter? In San Severo the answer hath been entrusted to the theatre. The newsstand hath not been merely restored in corporeal terms. It hath changed its function, transmuting itself into a place wherein artists encounter the public directly and wherein the performance becometh part of the quotidian life of the street. "The theatre cometh into the street wherein thou walkest every day," explained Francesco Gravino, thereby synthesising the philosophy underpinning the project. And it is precisely this aspect which hath rendered the experiment compelling also upon the plane of its possible replicability. Initial requests for information have already arrived from other cities, amongst them Lucca and Rome, desirous of apprehending the model and the modalities for its realisation. The strength of the Teatro Edicola resideth also in its apparent disproportion: a minimal investment and space to produce a far greater cultural effect. There is no need for a grand theatre, an auditorium of hundreds of seats, or complex structures. An unused space, an idea, and the will to restore it to the community suffice. That former newsstand in Via Tondi, therefore, narrateth something that transcendeth theatre itself. It narrateth the possibility of reconceiving the spaces of our cities, restoring a social function to places that seemed to have lost it definitively.

“TEATRO EDICOLA” OF SAN SEVERO BECOMES AN INTERNATIONAL CASE STUDY IN THE “STANFORD SOCIAL INNOVATION REVIEW (SSIR)” — STANFORD UNIVERSITY SOURCE: https://l1nq.com/rruntbb LA GAZZETTA DI SAN SEVERO SAN SEVERO (FG) — Six persons enter a news kiosk. Before them lie no newspapers, magazines, or tobacco, but a theatrical stage measuring less than two square metres. The actors stand but a few paces from the spectators, with scarce any separation betwixt those who perform and those who behold. It is in this manner that in San Severo a place abandoned for years hath begun to live anew. And today that diminutive theatrical experiment hath fallen beneath the glare of international attention. It is the story of the “Teatro Edicola”, the project realised by the company Foyer ’97, under the artistic direction of Francesco Gravino, which hath transformed an old news kiosk in Via Tondi into one of the smallest stages ever conceived. The project commenced on 27th March last, with a formula as simple as it is original: six seats, a stage of most exiguous dimensions, and performances lasting but a few minutes. A minimal distance betwixt public and performers that doth wholly alter the traditional relationship betwixt spectator and theatre. The wager, however, was forthwith rewarded by the public. More than 60 persons attended the performances in a single afternoon, and the three days of the inaugural season registered a complete sold-out. From a local experiment, the “Teatro Edicola” hath thus become a case capable of attracting attention far beyond the confines of the Province of Foggia. In September 2026, the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), the journal of Stanford University, shall publish upon its website and in its Fall 2026 print edition the reportage “The Six-Seat Revolution”, authored by Dr Luciano Magaldi Sardella and edited by Deputy Editor David V. Johnson. The interest of the American review concerneth not merely the originality of the theatrical proposition. The Teatro Edicola is, in fact, observed as a potential paradigm of social innovation and low-cost urban regeneration. Become a Medium member The idea is particularly compelling in a country such as Italy, wherein numerous news kiosks have ceased their activity and risk becoming vacant interstices within the urban fabric. The question, at bottom, is simple: can a place born to sell newspapers become once more a locus of encounter? In San Severo, the answer hath been entrusted to the theatre. The kiosk hath not been merely restored in a physical sense. It hath changed its function, transforming itself into a place where artists encounter the public directly and where the performance becometh part of the quotidian life of the street. “The theatre cometh into the street wherein thou walkest every day,” Francesco Gravino hath explained, thus synthesising the philosophy underpinning the project. And it is precisely this aspect that hath rendered the experience interesting also upon the plane of its potential replicability. Initial requests for information have already arrived from other cities, amongst them Lucca and Rome, interested in learning of the model and the modalities for its realisation. The strength of the Teatro Edicola resideth also in its apparent disproportion: a minimal investment and space to produce a cultural effect far greater. There is no need for a grand theatre, an auditorium of hundreds of seats, or complex structures. An unused space sufficeth, together with an idea and the will to restore it to the community. That old kiosk in Via Tondi, therefore, recounteth something that goeth beyond the theatre. It recounteth the possibility of rethinking the spaces of our cities, restoring a social function to places that seemed to have definitively lost it.

Lo so. L’unica cosa della quale, ahimè, mi dispiaccio molto è che ho creato dei mostri social IMBARAZZANTI. Delle copie imbarazzanti, sbiadite. Addirittura c’è chi si è appropriato del mio scurrile linguaggio adoperato 6/7 anni fa. E il risultato, sai qual è stato? Molti credevano fossi io. Ma c’è una legge che non sfuggirà mai a nessuno: i numeri. I fatti. Non le chiacchiere. SPUD resterà per sempre la creatura più potente mai esistita. Anche se morto. ENJOY #SocialMedia #Creativity #Originality

V denním sloupku upozorňuje Harald Martenstein na opakující se fráze politiků při vzpomínkách na oběti násilí, které reflektují nedostatek skutečné empatie a originality v jejich proslovech, a kritizuje, že každé takové vyjádření zůstává prázdné a nevhodně generalizuje různé tragédie. #Martenstein #Gesellschaft #Meinungsfreiheit

The major problem with the incentive structure on many monetizable platforms is that they reward sharing and copying over creating which encourages people to reuse other people's creations and eventually kills off the primary reason for people to create content in the first #ContentCreation #IncentiveStructure #Originality #Nospecificcountrycodesarementionedinthetweet.

Pauline Black, zpěvačka kapely The Selecter, při návštěvě Prahy hovořila o důležitosti originality v hudbě, osobních zkušenostech s rasismem a vlivu jejího dětství na umělecké jméno, přičemž zdůraznila, že skládat písně pod vlivem drog není dobré, neboť kvalitní hudba vyžaduje jasnou mysl. #Ska #Rasismus #PaulineBlack

Článek se zaměřuje na historii kultovní hry Prince of Persia, jejíž revoluční prvky a příběhy, včetně zásadních titulů jako Sands of Time a Warrior Within, zásadně ovlivnily vývoj videoher a přispěly k moderním herním principům, přičemž tvůrce Jordan Mechner zdůrazňuje význam originality a kreativity v omezeních tehdejší technologie. #PrinceOfPersia #JordanMechner #Videohry

V článku se reflektuje rostoucí vliv umělé inteligence v oblasti kreativního obsahu a zábavy, přičemž se zdůrazňuje, že skutečná genialita není nezbytná pro úspěch v tomto odvětví, ačkoliv se obavy týkající se originality a lidskosti uměleckého vyjádření stále objevují. #InteligenciaArtificial #ContenidoGenerado #Entretenimiento

Umělá inteligence výrazně usnadňuje psaní a generování textů, ale její využívání může nenápadně měnit naše myšlení a názory, což vede k uniformitě a ztrátě originality ve veřejné debatě. Tento jev zvaný mcdonaldizace může mít i neurologické důsledky, neboť oslabuje aktivitu mozkových sítí spojených s pamětí a soustředěním a maže jazykové stopy, které jsou klíčové pro diagnostiku nemocí, jako je Alzheimerova choroba. #UměláInteligence #Kreativita #Rozmanitost

How to Choose the Best Image for Your Medium Story <p>Unsplash is a great resource. But ever since its partnership (and embedded search-and-insert tool in the editor) with Medium in February 2018, it seems everybody is using it.</p><p>Is that good?</p><p>As a writer, if you do exactly what everyone else is doing, your voice will be lost in the crowd.</p><p>“It is better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation.”</p><p>— Herman Melville, novelist</p>

Good Design Can Copy <p>The ambitious are not content to <strong>imitate</strong>. This growth of taste is a conscious attempt at originality.</p><p>The greatest masters go on to achieve a kind of selflessness. They just want to get the right answer, and if part of the right answer has already been discovered by someone else, that's no reason not to use it. They're confident enough to take from anyone without feeling that their own vision will be lost in the process.</p>