Marco Martinelli, playwright and director, founded the Teatro delle Albe (1983) with Ermanna Montanari, it has become one of the most respected contemporary Italian theatre companies. Martinelli has been awarded numerous prizes including: five Ubu Prizes; the Drammaturgia In/Finita Prize; the Hystrio Prize; the Golden Laurel-international Festival Mess; and the Prize for Career Achievement- international festival Journées théâtrales de Carthage. His texts have been published and staged in Italy, France (selected by the European projects on contemporary playwriting Face à Face and Fabulamundi), Belgium, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, Chile, Brazil and the United States (translated in English by Thomas Simpson).

 Ermanna Montanari, actress, author and set designer, is Teatro delle Albe’s co-founder and artistic director with Marco Martinelli. For her work, and in particular for her extraordinary itinerary of vocal and musical research, she has been awarded prestigious acknowledgements including: three Ubu Prizes, the Golden Laurel-international Festival Mess; the Lo straniero Prize-dedicated to the memory of Carmelo Bene; the Eleonora Duse Prize, and the Prize of the Associazione Nazionale Critici di Teatro.Besides her numberous UBU awards, she won the Franco Enriquez Prize for directing and playwriting in 2012. Since 2014, she has taught playwriting at Scuola Civica Paolo Grassi, Milan.