Teatro LaBolla

The building Bollate wanted demolished

In August 2018 the newest public building in Bollate was a local scandal. The Urban Centre on Piazza della Resistenza — a theatre and auditorium put up about three years earlier by the previous centre-right council, over the objections of residents' committees and opposition parties — had never been inaugurated. Il Giorno found grass growing high around it, and the shallow fountain ringing the structure stagnant and used as a latrine. Residents called it “il mostro” online and asked the mayor, Francesco Vassallo, to pull it down. Estimated running costs had kept the town's cultural associations at arm's length, and no private investor had come forward.

The way out was a grant. The council entered the Fondazione Comunitaria Nord Milano call “Beni Comuni: attivatori del bene comune”, which put €75,000 on the table for bringing public space into use, behind a joint bid from three local associations: nudoecrudo teatro, Accademia Vivaldi and L'Orablù. The council committed a further €30,000 of its own to fill the shell with content. CSBNO, the library consortium covering the north-west of Milan, came in on logistics, organisation and management. The project was titled “Dal nulla a LaBolla” — from nothing to LaBolla — a name that leans on Bollate itself and on the LAB of laboratory.

Opened in November 2019, shut by March

The building admitted the public for the first time on 3 November 2019, an opening the organisers described as unexpectedly well attended. Programming began properly on 29 and 30 November, free of charge. The Friday was an opera evening, “Prima della Prima”, a walk through Puccini's Tosca led by Giuseppe Califano with the soprano Lucia Ellis Bertini and the tenor Michele Mauro, in collaboration with the Accademia Teatro alla Scala. The Saturday opened with the Arturo Toscanini band, then Compagnia L'abile Teatro's Mago per Svago for adults and children together, then the presentation of the 2020 programme. A week later, on 7 December, the hall screened Tosca live from La Scala.

The run lasted a few months. The pandemic closures cut the programme off and it did not resume. By 18 May 2021 the theatre had decided against using the reopening that the 22 April decree allowed — capacity capped at half, the summer season immediately ahead — and pushed its remaining dates to autumn 2021, asking the foundation to extend the project deadline to 31 December. The three partner associations had been hurt badly enough by the closures that they could not continue, and the council finished the programme itself. Lucia Albrizio, then assessore for culture and peace, framed that as respect for the community and for the foundation's own mission, and as a way of honouring the bookings already made with performers. Unused subscriptions were carried over.

What grew in the foyer

What exists now is a hall of almost 400 seats working from October to May: evening plays, Sunday afternoons for families, music, sessions for the very youngest children, author events and school matinées. The council's own account notes that the audience increasingly travels in from neighbouring comuni rather than Bollate alone, which for a town theatre of this size is the measure that matters.

The second half of the operation sits outside the auditorium. In 2021, as part of a wider urban regeneration scheme, the council set up a public–private partnership with two local social co-operatives, Stripes and Arca di Noè. The foyer stopped being a corridor and became a space that programmes its own meetings, workshops, exhibitions, shows and a small catering point; the square outside carries activity too. Weekday afternoons bring art workshops for families, and one afternoon a week is given over to teenagers under the name “Break in Bolla”. The site also holds a bar and kiosk and a community vegetable garden, and the hall is let out for recitals, courses, conferences, civic occasions and residencies for theatre companies and music agencies. The council's current shorthand for all of it is “LaBolla più di un luogo” — more than a place.

The 2026/27 season

Full-season subscriptions went on sale on 22 September 2026; single tickets and the five-night package followed on 29 September. Thirteen titles run from 18 October 2026 to 23 April 2027, with evening performances at 9pm and family matinées at 4pm. As in previous years the season is preceded by a free theatre event folded into the programme of the Festa della Biblioteca, tying the theatre to the town library.

The opener on Sunday 18 October is Becco di Rame, a Teatro del Buratto black-theatre animation piece for ages three and up, adapted by Ira Rubini from Alberto Briganti's book about a Toulouse goose fitted with a copper beak after losing part of its own to a fox. On Thursday 29 October Ambra Angiolini brings La misteriosa scomparsa di W, a Stefano Benni text produced by Teatro Carcano and her first outing as a director. Then Anche i sogni impossibili, on the mountaineer Fausto De Stefani's fifteenth eight-thousander, on 7 November; Paolo Kessisoglu's Closer on 27 November; La locandiera a long play on 11 December; and a Christmas show for families on 13 December. The second half runs Come diventare ricchi e famosi da un momento all'altro on 28 January 2027, Don Chisciotte senza mancia on 5 February, Resto qui on 26 February, Andrea Pennacchi's Alieni in laguna on 18 March, Giacomo Poretti and Daniela Cristofori in Come si diventa un angelo?, directed by Andrea Chiodi, on 9 April, and L'Agnese va a morire on 23 April.

The bill is deliberately mixed — comedy, tragedy, civic theatre and solo storytelling, established names against newer ones — and the culture assessore, Samuele Marazzi, announced it in September 2026 by borrowing a line from the critic Paolo Grassi: the theatre as the place where a freely assembled community reveals itself to itself, and where it hears a word it can accept or reject. The same announcement reported that the previous season had sold out nearly every performance, and that residents had been asking for the new programme for weeks before it appeared. It also makes clear the 2025/26 pattern that produced that: roughly twenty dates spanning Ausmerzen, Kataklò Athletic Dance Theatre's Aliena, Pippi Calzelunghe, a comedy ring show and Pippo Pollina's European tour stop.

Prices and access

Evening tickets are €24, reduced to €20 for over-65s, under-18s, students and holders of the +TECA library card — the CSBNO connection again, used as a discount mechanism. Sunday family shows are a flat €9. Three subscriptions are offered: Sostenitore at €160 for every evening show in the season, Open at €90 for any five evenings, and Famiglia at €22 for three matinées.

Sales run online through Ticketmaster, in person at Bollate's Ufficio Cultura — mornings Monday to Friday, with afternoon hours on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday — and at the theatre's own box office from an hour before curtain on the day. Bookings for disabled patrons are handled by the culture office by phone or email. Sottocoperta, run by the Stripes social co-operative, supervises children aged 4 to 13 from 8.45pm until the end of the performance for €8, which is the practical reason a family audience can attend a 9pm play at all.