Active quarries become majestic stone theaters, changing their shape with each edition.
Spectacular interdisciplinary productions, unrepeatable in other scenic spaces. Creative contents inspired by the morphology of the large walls, in a perfect combination of the beauty of natural stone and immersive video scenes projected onto them.
From opera to the performing arts, from dance to electronic music, site-specific productions and international artists: these are all the ingredients of Tones on the Stones, a unique artistic format, able to always guarantee great emotions.

Before and After will develop around its participants in a collective workshop project and then open up and involve the local community and cultural bodies. Around 30 young participants will be asked to reflect on and develop actions in working groups looking at thematic areas: communication, event production, architecture and self-building.

All participants and local residents will have the opportunity to draw on the stimuli made available and actively participate in the creation of a new space dedicated to culture within the Oira quarry, a theatre for the future.

A logbook will present the activities and performances hosted in the quarry to the general public. Before and After will also become short film destined for web and TV channels.

Within this creative process, citizens will also have an important role: rather than being mere consumers of content, they will be involved in the core process and will be included in the work we intend to present at the end of the residence.

The residency participants will also give life to a self-building project that will begin transforming the quarry into a theatre. They will have several questions around which they will structure the project: what does living mean? Is a new relationship between us and the natural environment possible? What is the path to a different concept of personal and collective well-being?

A number of illustrious guests will be on hand to help find possible answers.

Before and After Manifesto

An unexpected present has impertinently forced its way between what came before and the future, the before and the after, a complicated, difficult time we are experiencing with alternating disbelief, bewilderment, fear and a suffocating state of illusory calm.

The 2020 edition of Tones on The Stones and Nextones had been envisaged as rich and varied, crammed full of inspiration and a sincere desire to share with the public those collective emotions that, in our opinion, only live performances can provide. Then came the pandemic, choking the momentum and projecting us into a dimension of continuous reconsideration of a possible 2020 edition, but …

… Can we really renounce our utopian visions now?

Inevitably there will be a before and an after to the virus and this watershed moment will leave its mark, reminding us of our own fragility, that of our relationship with nature and that of western society’s apparently so strong and resilient way of life.

We have taken this “dividing line” as our starting point for imagining a 2020 edition of the festival named “Before and After” and a research format of a work in progress.

We cannot foresee how we will emerge from the pandemic, but this is perhaps the moment to challenge with ideas, amplifying the voices of artists and creatives, gathering narrations and visions applicable to a broader and more sustainable reality.

Before and After will come to life thanks to a workshop-cum-residency in the disused quarry of Oira, a tiny village in the Ossola Valley; a temporary micro-community of artists, creatives, scholars and technicians, committed to reflecting on the meaning of the word “social” at a time in which the expression “social distancing” has often been used improperly.

In parallel with this reflective and performative programme, a self-building project will be launched with the aim of converting the industrial space of the quarry into a permanent Natural Theatere, a new home for Tones on the Stones destined to host site-specific productions and inclusive projects with the inhabitants of this area.