“In a night of horror, men invented art”- Jose Carlos Somoza

This is an overview of a small theater company I started several years ago as an American living in Italy. It first consisted of my husband Sam, an Italian woman named Erica, my dog Elvis, and myself. Erica found the gigs, Sam organized the show structure and incorporated the music, and Elvis and I were strictly performers. It was small-time children’s shows and holiday events, nothing we would ever want to put on our resume or anything, but we were also getting creative on ways to pay our bills. 

We slowly started merging into a more international group, Italian, American, and Slovenian. Not solely actors, but musicians, contact body movers, dancers, poets, painters, and street performers. We organically meshed well together and fed off of each other, it only continued to inspire us more. We began acquiring experience and landing more interesting performances in museums and art openings. We worked well together and introduced several different elements we brought from our own backgrounds, our own walks of life, and cultures. We also almost preferred working outside of actual “theaters”. We kept creating and having long conversations about what art meant to us. Our international group continued to grow and the number of places we imagined bringing to life with our art became limitless. We broke the rules of conventional theater. We lived by our own rules. 

Our theater company is called Broken Jump. Late one evening we were having post-rehearsal beers and deciding what to call ourselves because the venue planned on advertising our show on flyers, in the press, and on the media. At the time our small little company was called Te-A-tre (because there were three of us) I was still trying out my Italian and I mentioned to one of the most well-known guys in the contact improv community in all of Europe, I said to him “Salto Rotto”. Leonardo called me strange but asked me to say it in English and I responded with “Broken Jump”… He said, “Yeah it most definitely sounds way better in English”. The name stuck and no one objected.

For any new person that came into the fold, I referred to them as a “jumper” because we seemed to attract people who were so versatile and were able to jump in and do whatever it was we were doing for the current project. It was a breath of fresh air to not feel confined or limited to a stage. If we felt like performing barefoot with a vintage front door and a drum set, we did. If we wanted to use puppets made of old iron trinkets we did. If we wanted to run throughout the streets of Arezzo dressed in a time zone that didn’t match modern day, we did it! If we wanted to sing and do voice soundscapes with shadows, we did it! If we wanted to use full face masks with no dialogue, we did it. In some performances, we did all of it at once. 

Broken Jump didn’t discriminate about who we worked with. We worked with people of all ages, from a Hollywood director, stage-trained actors, break-dancers, dream interpreters, pregnant women, children, farmers, study abroad students, farm animals, to people with zero experience but willing to do what it took to be a part of something greater, for the love of art. 

Our international flag collection continued to grow, we worked with Jumpers from South Korea, Russia, Argentina, Greece, Canada, and Bosnia. We wanted to offer our Tuscan town a piece of culture that was already there hiding in plain sight. From this strong desire, our inspiration for Promenade was born. Our partner Michele spearheaded this idea to do several little performances, in Meliciano, the small village Sam and I resided in outside Arezzo. He wanted to replicate something similar he had seen up north. Michele is a trained actor who pursued his studies in Venice. We leaned on him and he just naturally felt like one of us. On several occasions, after being promised payments for projects we had done until now, we were severely underpaid and most venues tried to get out of paying us altogether. Sam, Michele, and I wanted to go “legit”. We went and opened up a cultural association, to avoid people scamming us who claimed they wanted “to bring culture and performance art” to their venue but didn’t want to pay us for all of our hard work we had poured ourselves into and our own money and time we had invested. Sadly even being legit won’t stop people from reneging on prices they originally quoted and agreed to pay. Financially we rarely broke even after each show and never had enough money to pay our Jumpers. But at least with Promenade, we had a say in all of the aspects. It turned into an annual event getting larger each year. We can honestly say that we have never been able to pay ourselves for any single event to this very day. Promenade has turned into a sensation and what the public looks forward to every single year because it isn’t your ordinary “night at the theater”. But with growth comes more expenses. It has started to feel more like a job and high expectations instead of doing it for the love of art.  We started veering in different directions, new hands started getting dipped in the decision-making of the event, and the town started to get stiff about certain aspects, rightfully so, they lived there full time. Promenade turned 6 years old last fall.  

I asked Sam what his vision is for Broken Jump, and what his big picture looks like… 

“To do a site-specific piece based on the commuter ferry that they made in New York some years ago, working with different architectural departments, it’s not necessarily the big picture it’s just the dream project that keeps me going” 

I also asked Michele the same question. I’m paraphrasing and translating here: “Art is the refuge from life’s hardships, a remedy for the soul that helps us face challenges with more serenity. I wish our art would leave an indelible mark in time, uniting people in total and liberating sharing. As in Euripides’ theater, the forest symbolizes freedom and irrationality, a world outside social conventions. I dream of an art free from constraints and dogmas, capable of uniting people in a community event understandable to all.”

Sam and Michele recently went to Milan to do some research with a core group of Jumpers. Forcing the company to revisit the basics and ask what is art to us? Since 2015 Broken Jump has acquired valuable knowledge that we can now apply to guide our future decisions. Broken Jump consistently demonstrates exceptional dedication and consistently delivers outstanding results through their hard work. We survived a global pandemic, and our experience in getting creative on how to keep going is an art form in itself. It’s also nice to get some recognition from our town and from the press. The local news started to follow our journey and covering most of our events, televising for the region to see.

Here’s a recent article that we are featured in: https://www.wearearezzo.it/broken-jump/

We started as an international collective doing “site-specific theater” meaning theater in unconventional places. I believe we still have that vision. If you want to see what our future endeavors are or jump in on the fun visit our website: https://brokenjump.com/