Gianni Battilà Award – Young Jury Prize at I Teatri del Mondo | Festival Internazionale del Teatro per Ragazzi 2025 2025

“My good sirs, pray lend your ears, if noble blood you claim, of valiant Robin Hood you now shall hear the deeds and fame…”  

Robin Hood of Sherwood — the outlaw par excellence — is perhaps the only figure in European culture to have travelled seamlessly across every medium from the Late Middle Ages to the present day: from the oral tradition of marketplaces and fairs to today’s global landscape of film and television. Thief and brigand, outlaw and gentleman, the “finest archer in England” emerges from the popular ballads as a rebel against social injustice and tyranny. Both rogue and champion, Robin stands with peasants and the dispossessed: he “robs from the rich to give to the poor.” Defender of the oppressed and bold trickster who defies the constraints of unjust laws, Robin embodies the universal human aspiration to freedom. His deeds give voice to the search for dignity — a dignity capable of redeeming marginalised and impoverished lives. Telling the story of Robin Hood offers young audiences a simple yet universal message: rules are meant to be respected — but when they are unjust, one must find the courage to say no and to stand up against them. With the language of an essential, slightly old-fashioned theatre — featuring minimalist sets crafted from simple materials — the two performers engage children through live storytelling, reawakening the art of listening. Like travelling storytellers in a small village square, they evoke Robin’s tale, reshape it, reinvent it and play with it. They wear it like a tailored garment, stepping inside it until they too become “children” — climbing trees just like Robin Hood and his companion Little John. Once upon a time, there was a famous outlaw who, in order to escape the unjust laws of his era, built his refuge high up in the trees. From there, the world appeared small — within reach, within everyone’s grasp — with neither servants nor masters.