Progetto Young was born in 2013 from an idea of director Fabio Comana, to offer a higher-level training space to young aspiring actors/actresses with solid grassroots theater experience. This led to the creation of the shows Smart Green City inspired by Calvino’s Città Invisibili, Il suono della conchiglia from Golding’s Lord of the Flies, performed at the Teatro Sociale in 2013 and 2014, and A tavola con Arlecchino, an original traveling show in the cloister of San Francesco, on the occasion of Expo 2015. In 2016, Maria Grazia Panigada chooses to strengthen and expand the project, bringing it inside the Donizetti Theater, which is considered the most appropriate venue for different training paths encompassing multiple disciplines of the theatrical art. The workshop for actors is then joined by one for playwrights, and the idea of integrating the basic training, led by Comana, with a series of monographic meetings with guest actors and directors from the Donizetti Theater’s prose season, such as Cesar Brie, Marco Baliani, Maria Maglietta, and Marco Martinelli, is born. From this phase come the shows Il punto di vista (2016, Auditorium of Piazza della Libertà), Processo di Carnevale (in the spaces of Teatro Donizetti for Carnival 2017), Labirinti, performed in the summer of 2017 in touring mode inside the former Monastery of Astino, and Sogno di una notte di mezza estate, an adaptation of the Shakespearean text for a touring performance in the woods of the Parco dei Colli di Bergamo, in September 2018. The students of the two-year period 2023-2024 produced two shows: Vaganti, staged among the spaces, also “secret,” of the Donizetti Theater, and Vorrei che fosse amore, directed by Argentine Cèsar Brie and performed at the Teatro Sociale in June 2024. As proof of the success of the project’s intentions, suffice it to say that as many as four actresses trained in Young have passed the entrance exams to three prestigious national academies (Piccolo Teatro School and Scuola Paolo Grassi in Milan, Teatro Stabile in Turin, and Accademia Nico Pepe in Udine, ) and – by now graduates – have begun their careers as professionals. But that’s not all: several Progetto Young alumni have continued their involvement in provincial and regional theater, finding space in professional structures or creating new ensembles to open up spaces for artistic and organizational autonomy.