Founded in 2008, Office for a Human Theatre (OHT) is a research studio working with landscapes and personal politics subtly addressed in public and private spaces.

OHT is led by Filippo Andreatta and Anna Benazzoli and works in the domain of theatre and beyond by collaborating with festivals, public administrations, contemporary art museums, theatres and underrepresented realities. It has collaborated nationally and internationally with, among others, Saari Residence (FI), Piccolo Teatro di Milano (IT), Schinkel Pavillion Berlin (DE), La Serre Arts Vivants(CA), Venice Biennale Theatre, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Josef and Anni Albers Foundation (USA), i Teatrifoundation Reggio Emilia, Short Theatre festival Rome, FAR Nyon festival (CH), Romaeuropa festival, Triennale Teatro Milano, Whitechapel Gallery Londra (UK), MAXXI museum of the Arts of XXI Century Rome and Centrale Fies.

A few publications on or including OHT are Frankenstein. If You Love Solitude You Don’t Love Freedompublished by bruno, This curious Manual of Dramaturgy for éditions du passage and festival TransAmériques Montréal, The Journal of Architecture: vol 24 num 8, published by Routledge and Loc. Fies 1 / Little Fun Palace published by bruno. Recently, A Nomadic Book has been awarded the Italian Council for international publication and is co-edited by Filippo Andreatta and Sarah Messerschmidt.

Sarah Messerschmidt is a writer working across the visual and literary arts, and she works as an Assistant Curator at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. Her current research is informed by an ongoing interest in the dynamic relationships between archival practices, literary poetics and other literary forms, as well as moving image. In particular, she examines experimental and nonfiction films as ways of representing experience, particularly those that respond to legacies of colonialism. Looking at moving image practices as methods of reinvention and world-making, she is interested in the mediation of memory via footage, taking into consideration the politics of representation and relations of power in image making, while also considering film and video as insurgent media capable of establishing political and social solidarity. Her inquiries also consider the ways in which film can merge fiction with research, cultural analysis, and critical writing in order to draw out complex ideas about the relationships between visual culture, power, and colonial violence. Messerschmidt was a postgraduate researcher at the University of Glasgow, and has been an affiliated writer with the Maumaus Independent Study Programme in Lisbon, ‘The Whole Life: An Archive Project’ at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, and she was a Writer in Residence supported by the Kunstverein München. She regularly contributes essays and other texts to exhibition catalogues, journals, and magazines internationally, including Artforum, Art Monthly (UK), Texte zur Kunst, and Third Text, among others. She has been a mentor on the OHT Nomadic School in the Alps, and most recently collaborated with Filippo Andreatta as co-editor on the publication A Nomadic Book, published by bruno books in Venice. 

Filippo Andreatta is an artist and curator. He has established the Office for a Human Theatre to create works that disrupt the hierarchy of sight and listening. He realises shows, performances, installations and unconventional formats in urban and non-urban contexts; he has read Frankenstein around a bonfire at the 79th parallel north in the Svalbard archipelago, staged an abandoned tower-bell via Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli, created Little Fun Palace a parasitic caravan that has travelled Europe and North America, curated the feminist futures festival for Centrale Fies and initiated the Nomadic School that moves between mountains, swamps and other rural areas contaminating performing arts with natural and social sciences. Filippo Andreatta develops his artistic research with the productive and organisational collaboration of Office for a Human Theatre [OHT], the research studio he founded in 2008. Together, they explore private and public spaces shaking the centre and margins of theatre and redefining the map of our positions in shared spaces. OHT works in the domain of theatre and beyond by collaborating with festivals, public administrations, contemporary art museums, theatres and underground realities. Furthermore, OHT has been involved in a series of publications like “loc. Fies 1 / Little Fun Palace” published by bruno books in Venice, a contribution for “the Journal of Architecture: Volume 24: Number 8” published by Routledge and two catalogues by MAXXI museum of the Arts of XXI Century Rome, to name only a few. In 2024, two volumes on OHT’s works will be published and distributed internationally by bruno books; the first dedicated to Frankenstein, the second to the Nomadic School.