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A masked ball armed to the teeth. An irreverent musical on the edge. A toy weapon to play war. And, in the end, the desert. A desert in miniature. A waiting room desert. A shopping mall desert. A pretend desert, locked up in a box: a child's desert, a toy desert. At Arms is not about this or any other war. At Arms is an experiment. It is an attempt to focus on the political and economic issue of the international arms market, which, as the eighth largest arms exporting country in the world, concerns us closely and has become, during the conception of this show, dramatically topical. And it attempts to do so through a precise lens, that of the toy, contaminating techniques and codes in search of a meeting point between civil theater and object theater. More than a title, Alle Armi is a formula: a declaration of intent, and at the same time a cry of alarm. And perhaps also an exhortation, an appeal. To take up arms, of course: but which ones?

Hombre Collective was born in 2019 from the Animateria course. Already from the first study it shows a propensity for research and experimentation on the languages of figure theater, from which derives a strong tendency to hybridization and contamination of techniques and codes. A practice that is shared in its fundamentals and makes use of the group's diverse skills, in an artistic vision that is as coherent as it is multifaceted. The first study, The Unspeakable Cities (selected Project Yard 2019), consists, in fact, of an attempt to explore the potential and limits of object, shadow and narrative theater. The group continues, then, its research, focusing on the intersection of object theater and civil and documentary theater, in an attempt to address fundamental and current historical and political issues in an alternative way. From this intention was born, self-produced, Casa Nostra, winner of the 2020 Scenario Infanzia Prize and the 2021 Direction Under30 Critic Award. In 2022 the company undertook work on Alle Armi, a play for adult audiences produced by Teatro Metastasio in Prato, which premiered at Teatro Fabbricone in March 2023.