BIO

DARIA DEFLORIAN is an actress, playwright, and director. As a performer, she has worked, among others, with Nanni Moretti, Stéphane Braunschweig, Massimiliano Civica, Lotte van den Berg, Lucia Calamaro, Fabrizio Arcuri, Mario Martone, Martha Clarke, Remondi and Caporossi, Fabrizio Crisafulli, and Marcello Sambati. She won the 2012 Ubu Prize for Best Actress and the 2013 Hystrio Prize.
From 2008 to 2021, she collaborated closely with Antonio Tagliarini: their productions, presented across Italy and Europe, received numerous awards, including the 2014 Ubu Prize for Best Text, the 2015 Award for Best Foreign Production in Canada, the 2019 Riccione Prize for Playwriting, and the 2021 Hystrio Prize for Dramaturgy. Their texts have been published by Titivillus, Cue Press, and Sossella Editore. In 2023, Sossella Editore also published Qualcosa di sé. Il teatro di Daria Deflorian, edited by Rossella Menna.
In 2022, she wrote and directed En finir, based on Changer méthode by Édouard Louis, with students from La Manufacture theatre school in Lausanne; in 2023, Elogio della vita a rovescio, freely inspired by the works of Han Kang; in 2024, she adapted and directed La vegetariana, scenes from Han Kang’s novel, before the author received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature; and in 2025, she wrote and directed Credo di aver avuto un’infanzia normale, the final production of the Gian Maria Volonté film school students. Also in 2025, she directed the radio drama Tuo per sempre by Adriano Saleri and Mario Migliucci, winner of the Andrea Camilleri Prize.
She regularly teaches acting and stage writing, both independently and for the Silvio d’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Piccolo Teatro School in Milan, and the ERT School. She is an associate artist at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano for the 2025–2027 three-year period, after having held the same role at the Milan Triennale during the previous three years. Since 2021, she has co-directed the artistic programme of Index together with the company Muta Imago.
Her next production, Che dolore terribile è l’amore, based on Non dico addio by Han Kang, will premiere at the Avignon Festival in July 2026.

AZZURRA D’AGOSTINO was born and lives in a small village in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. She has published several poetry collections — earning the Carducci Prize and the Ciampi Valigie Rosse Prize, and being shortlisted for the Viareggio-Repaci Prize — and writes for theatre both for adults (collaborating with Daria Deflorian, Marco D’Agostin, Teatro dei Venti — with whom she won the 2025 Special UBU Prize — among others) and for children (with Teatro dell’Argine and others).
She collaborates on and tours across Europe with Sparks, a performance by visual artist Francesca Grilli, with whom she has developed an ongoing dialogic creative practice around several projects, including Record (winner of the 2026 Werner Fenz Grant for Art in Public Space) and La Piena / The Flood (a new production).
She has published dozens of children’s picture books, young adult novels, and early readers (with publishers such as Giunti, DeA, Fatatrac, Il Castoro, Erikson, and others), as well as the translation of a radio drama on Hölderlin (Mimesis), books exploring dreamlike and folkloric themes, and tarot and oracle decks (Whitestar Vivida).
Alongside her writing, she leads poetry workshops for people of all ages and is the founder of the SassiScritti Association in Porretta Terme (Bologna), which was shortlisted for the Ubu Prize for Best Organisational Project in 2016 and for the Rete Critica Prize in 2018. In 2026, her latest poetry collection, Cosmic Latte, was selected for the final twelve of the Strega Poetry Prize.