"LILLA" – by LaCruna wins testinscena® 2026 🌸

A great achievement for the Accademia Teatro Dimitri: Benedetta Iele, Luna Scolari, and Isabella Giampaolo, alumni of the Accademia Teatro Dimitri and founders of the theatre company LaCruna from Gordola, have won the 2026 edition of testinscena®, the new playwriting competition conceived and organized by the Claudia Lombardi Foundation for Theatre.

The award ceremony took place earlier this month. The competition, supported by the City of Lugano, Teatro Foce, Campo Teatrale (Milan), IntercettAzioni – Centro di Residenza Artistica della Lombardia, and Pastelle Media, under the patronage of LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, FIT – International Festival of Contemporary Theatre and Performing Arts, and Hystrio, recognized Lilla for its outstanding artistic and dramaturgical quality.

The jury, composed of Francesca Sangalli, Claudio Chiapparino, Sabrina Faller, Gianfranco Helbling, Claudia Lombardi, Ermanno Nardi, and Donato Nubile, praised all the finalist projects for their “high level of technical and performative refinement” as well as for “the quality of their dramaturgy and artistic ideas.” In its statement on Lilla, the jury highlighted a work that “addresses illness—particularly breast cancer and the dispossession of the female body—with a poetic and original voice, capable of revealing the drama through irony, without resorting to a rhetoric of suffering.” The excerpt presented, the jury continued, “reveals a powerful stage concept, supported by a clear and well-structured dramaturgical framework.”

As winners, LaCruna will receive a cash prize, 31 days of artistic residency, artistic mentoring, an initial tour across Ticino and Lombardy, and additional professional support, including press office services, stage photography, and technical assistance.

Warmest congratulations to the winners! We are proud of your achievement. 

LILLA

“Lilla exists. But this is not her story.A vacuum cleaner and breast cancer: two distant worlds that, in the protagonist’s life, end up brushing against each other.

Lilla is a journey that weaves irony and poetry, where lightness does not erase the depth of a real battle.

It is a challenge. Like life itself. Like every personal story, spoken or unspoken.”

By: Benedetta Iele

With: Benedetta Iele, Luna Scolari, Kasia Stankiewicz

Music: Paolo Cotrone

Lighting: Jacopo Sidari