Puglia between memory and future
Puglia — Between Memory and Future: The Beauty That Endures
MEETINGS, FLAVORS, SCENES
XIX EDITION
Teatro dei Luoghi — International Festival 2025
A PROJECT BY KOREJA
📍 Lecce, Cantieri Teatrali Koreja
Thursday, December 4, 2025 | from 5:30 p.m.
An event dedicated to reflection and to the appreciation of the new face of Puglia after Xylella.
A moment of dialogue, discovery, and taste intertwining culture, environment, and territory, to tell how the Region is rewriting its landscape, agricultural, and cultural identity — transforming a deep wound into an opportunity for collective rebirth.
A time to reflect on the new identity of a land that, though wounded, has found the strength to bloom again, welcoming citizens and travellers with a universal message of resilience, innovation, and passion.
Through the language of theatre, dialogue with experts, and the sensory experience of tasting, Puglia tells its story as a laboratory of renewal.
The wound caused by Xylella, from agricultural tragedy, becomes an opportunity for cultural regeneration, capable of attracting an audience interested not only in the beauty of places, but also in the living history they hold.
Program
ROUND TABLE 🕠 5:30 p.m. | FREE ENTRY
THE CHANGED LANDSCAPE: FROM WOUND TO REBIRTH
Experts in landscape, agronomists, architects, tourism operators, journalists, administrators, and artists meet to reflect on the theme of the new Apulian landscape — the one that took shape after the devastation caused by Xylella, the bacterium that forever changed the face of the ancient olive groves of the Salento and much of the Region.
How has the disappearance of hundreds of olive trees reshaped Puglia, both visually and symbolically?
How have local communities reacted to the loss of an identity symbol, finding in this “new” landscape new narratives and creative possibilities?
How can the story of transformation and rebirth be told?
From alternative crops to replanting projects, from experiential tourism to art — today the Apulian territory presents itself with new colours, scents, and cultural perspectives.
TASTING 🕖 7:30 p.m |FREE ENTRY
THE NEW OIL OF REBIRTH
A guided tasting dedicated to newly produced extra virgin olive oils, the result of the work of farms that have managed to be reborn after Xylella.
Guests will taste oils obtained from resistant cultivars such as Favolosa (FS-17) and Leccino, authentic expressions of the new course of Apulian olive growing.
During the experience, producers and experts will share sustainable and agronomic practices that are reshaping the olive landscape — a symbol of a Puglia looking toward the future.
Oil will be presented not only as a gastronomic excellence, but as an identity element, guardian of memory, and engine of innovation.
A sensory and immersive journey where taste intertwines with stories of resilience, creativity, and passion: the truest essence of contemporary Puglia.
THEATRE PERFORMANCE 🕣 8:45 p.m. | 🎟 ticket €5
Proceeds will be donated to the planting of new olive trees
Teatro Koreja in collaboration with Potenziali Evocati Multimediali
🎭 X di Xylella, Bibbia e Alberi Sacri
With Chiara Dello Iacovo, Luna Maggio, Emanuela Pisicchio, Kyara Russo, Maria Tucci, Andjelka Vulic
Directed by Gabriele Vacis
Sound design and stage setup Roberto Tarasco
The people of Puglia are children of the olive trees and the sun.
Oil is their blood, the memory that flows through the land.
But in 2013, a bacterium — Xylella — began to burn those ancient trees once believed to be immortal.
Since then, Puglia has been fighting to defend its roots and to be reborn from that green wound.
Yet the tragedy of Xylella is also a symbol of feminine pain: an invisible infection that slowly erodes the roots, consuming strength and life. Like women, olive trees too are bearers of stories, sap, and memory.
Xylella, like certain inner sufferings, works in silence — destroying from within, leaving visible scars upon a land that struggles to heal.