🇪🇺 TEEN European Digital Community: Willow Tree from Dublin, Ireland

Willow Tree

I am an Italian theatre artist based in Dublin. I trained professionally as an actor, first in Milan and then at the Gaiety School of Acting.

My practice is strongly rooted in movement, collaborative devising, and writing. Much of my work explores themes of privilege, memory, and identity.

As part of the theatre collective Straight Out the Box, I co-created and performed in Show Me Your Macarena, a dark comedy that premiered at the Milan Fringe Festival in June.

I am the assistant director of The Conference of Birds, a multidisciplinary project about endangered bird species in Ireland, created and directed by Andrea Scott in collaboration with the Elders group.

Alongside my work as a theatre maker and performer, I facilitate drama workshops for young people, international students, and adults with learning disabilities.

I am also one of the recipients of the Pavilion Pulse Award 2025, which has supported the research and development of a new play exploring immigrant identity.

The soil / the need

I was a very diligent student in primary school, the one with the best marks and who excelled in every subject. Once I got to middle school, my peers soon started to identify me as the “smart” kid, the know-all to go to for help with homework, son of two teachers and unlikely to ever fail in a test.
I decided to pursue theatre because I needed to break out of that identity. I wanted to have fun and be a freak, to put it simply. I wanted to be silly. I wanted to try be something other than me really. And once I started acting, I immediately fell in love with it. It was exhilarating. Liberating. Terrifying. It gave me permission to explore and discover new parts of me, the ones that I kept hidden and did not align with the stereotype of a good student.
What I missed, without even being aware of it, was an opportunity to come out of my own shell and be brave. Theatre gave me that. It gave me courage and opened up a vast new world to discover.

The first seed

A teacher / school

Tell us about that first spark

My first close encounter with theatre happened when I was about 6 or 7 years old. My father, a Maths teacher in middle school, used to go to the theatre lab school productions to support some of his students performing yearly on the stage. He started taking me with him and I clearly remember seeing a production of “The Canterville Ghost” and being mesmerized by it. I remember thinking ‘the moment I start middle school, I’ll sign up for the afternoon drama classes’. And that’s exactly what happened when I finished primary school.

Roots (people & experiences that shaped your path)

If I look at my theatre journey so far I can clearly identify three main roots.
My first root is a person, the teacher that used to lead and facilitate the afternoon drama laboratory in my school. He is the first person that saw something in me and pushed me to embrace my passion for theatre, giving me the space and trust to perform the lead roles in all the school productions.
My second root is an experience that I had in Poland four years ago. I had just graduated from drama school in Milan and went to the Growtoski forest base of Brzezinka to participate in a 10 days workshop with Polish company Studio Kokyu. It was an incredibly nourishing experience and one that I look at as a watershed in both my human and artistic development.
My third root is a place, the city of Dublin, in Ireland. That’s where I moved to keep training and where I am still currently based, trying to further develop my practice as a theatre artist and build my career as an actor. Dublin is the place where I stepped into adulthood, questioned my identity and pursued my dream.

The trunk (what keeps you in theatre)

My love for theatre has kept growing more and more over the years. What particularly keeps me connected to it is the impact that it can have on communities as well as the collaborative framework at its core. There is nothing that I enjoy more than sharing ideas and working together with other creatives towards the same artistic vision. I am deeply passionate about storytelling and using art as a tool to empower, raise awareness and ask challenging questions. These are all things that are to me inherent to theatre and that connect me to it viscerally.

Branches (future / desire)

I wish a future for myself where I can keep working in the theatre industry, telling stories that matter and making a living out of it. I particularly want to make theatre that empowers young people and those on the fringes of societies. I would like to blend my artistic practice with political activism and social work more and more, aiming to support coommunties and facilitate processes of peace and integration through theatre and performance.
I hope that theatre can give me happiness in the long term. I hope that it can fulfill me and provide me with opportunities of personal growth and connection to both likeminded people and those who will challenge my ideas and perspective.

Are you currently involved in cultural activities?

Yes, regularly

If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? Why?

If I were a tree, I would be a willow. I’ve picked this tree because it symbolizes for me resilience and I believe that is essential to have to pursue a career in this industry. It’s also the tree that grows on the river banks close to my home in Italy and that reminds me of where I come from.

Contact

Email: stefano.callovi@gmail.com

Instagram: @stefano_callovi

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