lorenzopuntoponte [at] gmail.com I was born in Rome, raised between Palermo and Milan. I graduated in **Classics literature** at the Catholic University of Milan thinking that I would be a literature professor. Then I started a course of theater and I decided to look for a different relationship with words. Therefore I went to study Theater Direction at the **Paolo Grassi Civic School** in Milan. Among the most precious meetings for my artistic and professional growth I count Mariano Furlani, Maurizio Schmidt, Carmelo Rifici, Marco Maccieri, Renata Molinari, Davide Carnevali, Giuliana Musso, and Claudio Autelli. From each of them I have stolen and I continue to steal. After my studies I started working as an assistant director at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and at the Teatro Franco Parenti with Andrée Ruth Shammah. These were the years of my apprenticeship, in which I began to understand how a theater stage is made and who its inhabitants are. I’ve directed prose theater and opera shows. Sometimes I feel the need to write the stories I tell myself, sometimes I work with the words of Others. In 2018, together with Maddalena Massafra, Clio Sciro Saccà, Marco Sinopoli, we won the Macerata Opera Festival 4.0 competition for the writing and composition of a contemporary opera. In 2022, I received the 3rd prize of the EOP – European Opera Prize for Directors, together with Alice Benazzi and Giulia Rossena. In 2023, we won the 13th edition of the **EOP – European Opera Award for Directors**. *From that shame, impotence and pain, something was born that I believe was the desire to become a poet, that is, to be able to express what it means to feel regret for someone, to have been loved, to be alone.*
Stig Dagerman