About
Founded in 1998 in San Gimignano (Siena, Italy), Giardino Chiuso was born out of the diverse experiences of its founders in theatre, contemporary dance, and visual arts. These formative experiences shaped the company’s research toward the intersections of word, movement, and visual art, a distinctive artistic signature that still defines its work today. Over the years, the company has expanded its activities to include cultural event organization, educational workshops, and training programs, both nationally and internationally.
Giardino Chiuso has produced numerous theatre-dance works, performed across Italy and abroad, often in co-production with prestigious institutions such as Festival Fabbrica Europa, Teatro Studio Krypton, Versiliadanza, MART Trento-Rovereto, Festival Magna Grecia, Italian Cultural Institute in Cologne, Teatro Regio Parma, and Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato. Recent productions include Inverno (2017, original music by cellist Julia Kent), Macchine (2018, Yerevan – Armenia, based on Sebastiano Vassalli’s novel The Death of Marx and Other Stories), Pinocchio (2019, Teatro Goldoni – Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Florence), and Bianchisentieri (touring since 2013). The company also supports emerging artists, winning the Twain_direzioniAltre Award (2021) for Entanglement by Lorenzo di Rocco and Jennifer Rosati, and the Anghiari Dance Hub Choreographers Award (2022) for Fiori Assenti by Emma Zani and Roberto Doveri.
Over time, Giardino Chiuso has established collaborations with prominent external artists, including writers Sebastiano Vassalli, Vittorio Cielo, Michele Santeramo, actors Virginio Gazzolo, Mariano Rigillo, Carla Tatò, composer Julia Kent, directors Giancarlo Cauteruccio, Carlo Quartucci, choreographer Virgilio Sieni, sculptor Marco Di Piazza, painter Pino Chiezzi, and artist Antony Gormley.
Since 2002, under the artistic direction of Tuccio Guicciardini and Patrizia de Bari, the company has curated the winter season “Leggieri d’Inverno” at Teatro dei Leggieri in San Gimignano, showcasing new languages in theatre and contemporary dance and highlighting the potential of peripheral theatres as important cultural production hubs.
Between 2002 and 2012, it curated the summer series Danza San Gimignano, featuring prominent Italian and international dance artists. In 2013, it launched the Orizzonti Verticali – Performing Arts in Progress festival, aimed at fostering multidisciplinary dialogue across theatre, dance, music, performance, and visual arts, including book presentations and discussions between authors, critics, artists, and the public. The festival developed strong collaborations with local institutions such as the San Gimignano Civic Museums, Torre e Casa Campatelli – FAI Heritage, and the Galleria Continua contemporary art gallery. Since 2016, Orizzonti Verticali has benefited from an active partnership with Fondazione Fabbrica Europa (Florence), reinforcing its regional and national cultural impact.
Giardino Chiuso has collaborated extensively in training initiatives, including with Fondazione Toscana Spettacolo (Florence) and the Accademia sull’Arte del Gesto led by Virgilio Sieni. In 2012, it participated in the Advanced Artistic and Technical Training Course T.U. Teatro Urbano (POR FSE Regione Toscana, Ministry of Labour and Social Policies) alongside Compagnia Krypton (Scandicci) and Teatro dell’Aglio (Piombino).
In April 2018, the company was invited to Yerevan (Armenia) to conduct a training course in stage action, during which young dancers and actors participated in the creation of a new version of Macchine. For this occasion, the text was translated into Armenian, and the work was later performed during the XVIII Week of Italian Language in the Worldand toured Italy in 2019 with the support of the Italian Embassy in Armenia.
Giardino Chiuso’s work has consistently explored visual art languages, incorporating video mapping, live and post-produced video. Since 2020, the company has been developing projects in 3D and Virtual Reality, winning the Fondazione Toscana Spettacolo Onlus grant “Così remoti, così vicini” for the VR digitization of L’imputato non è colpevole on the Oculus platform. Since 2022, it has supported artists Agnese Lanza and Margherita Landi on VR research projects, producing the experimental work Peaceful Places.
In 2021, Bianchisentieri and Sentieri di carta received recognition from the Association of Italian UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
In 2023, the company won the PNRR TOCC Digital Transition program with Abbraccia un borgo, a pilot project promoting and producing live performances using new technologies in small Tuscan towns.
Giardino Chiuso has been supported by the Tuscany Region since 2003 and received funding for Artistic and Cultural Residency Projects in 2013–2015. In 2016, it became a founding member of Fondazione Fabbrica Europa and was accredited by the Tuscany Region as a regional performing arts institution, based at Teatro dei Leggieri in San Gimignano, with a mission to promote contemporary interdisciplinary creation. Since 2021, Giardino Chiuso has been officially recognized by the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiC).