In TPO creation coincides with an interactive scenery.

Using digital design, all sets become “sensitive environments” and continuous crossfades between art and play can be experienced. Dancers, performers and the audience share the stage and find a common ground of enjoyment beyond cultural and language barriers. Each artwork is designed to dialogue with players in motion, individual dancers or children. Images and sounds interface with the moving bodies on stage, transforming live gestures and virtual landscapes into a charming interactive art environment.

In TPO productions the role of performer achieves a special value. Through interactive effects the dancers on stage move their bodies to “paint” and “play music” but, above all, they invite the audience of children to explore the space with an approach to theatre that emphasises the use of the body and the gaze. Company TPO’s work is directed by a versatile and tight-knit team led by Davide Venturini and Francesco Gandi.

A prize-winning company, in 2002 TPO devised the concept of the ‘children’s cheering carpet’ a ‘magic’ carpet where, through movement and touch, it is possible to explore imaginary gardens devised to create access to places in the world of art. Still making new work today, and touring internationally, the company continues to create work that is visual, emotional, tactile and immersive.

Crying Out Loud and Company TPO

Inspired by their innovative use of technology to create sensory and immersive theatrical environments for children, Crying Out Loud introduced Company TPO to the UK in 2004. We worked with them regularly for several years, extensively touring their productions across the UK and internationally, introducing them to USA and Australia.

In addition to touring The Japanese Garden, The Kurdish Garden, Butterflies and Kindur, we collaborated with TPO in a pilot project for children on the autistic spectrum at London’s Purcell Room during a run of Butterflies. This led to the co-commission of a special residency to create Dance Please! at Chats Palace with Ben Duke. This was the beginning of Opening Out, a strand of Crying Out Loud’s work that provides access to high quality work for children on the autistic spectrum.