‘as a spectator, you also have a responsibility’ fabio cherstich on the boundaries of art and theater
the italian director's unique approach to performance has taken him to new york archives, miu miu performances in shanghai, and even the countryside home of the late painter, lucia di luciano.
Cherstich, a theater director among other things
Fabio Cherstich is a theater director. Not the theaters of days of yore, but the type of theater where a face may flash onto a screen that backgrounds the stage, glowering down on its audience. The kinds of productions that slink into the piazzas of Rome, carrying actors, pomp, and circumstance by means of long-haul semi-trucks. Or a spectacle that forms around vintage cars racing from Venice, Italy, through the Dolomites, for Louis Vuitton’s Classic Run. Chatting with designboom in his home-studio in Milan, Cherstich speaks about art on and off the stage, his collection of Alessi moka pots, and how difficult it has been for him to condense all this into a website.
on the woes of making a website
As the list of his projects, which seem to leap and saunter between the worlds of painting, film, and the performing arts, grows, the container that is ‘theater director’ starts to bulge at the seams. Perhaps it’s best remarked on by the man himself on his website, a work in progress, blank page with just a sans serif font that starts with ‘a note instead of a website.’ At the end of the list of all the things he has done – opera, theater, contemporary art, film, books – he adds, ‘and other territories that are not always easy to name.’
In his kitchen on a Sunday morning, in an apartment that looks out onto a historic Milanese palazzo fitted with a church’s bell tower that chimes on the hour, he expands more on his difficulty in creating this website, a journey that extends well beyond HTML and CSS. ‘But the problem for me is how I define myself,’ he says of trying to form his experience into a zippy portfolio. ‘This was a very important topic with my psychotherapist for two years. I have to say, ‘I am a director,’ but it’s not true. I work as a director, but this is the definition of my job, it’s not the definition of myself.’
design, a coffee maker, and aldo rossi
He pontificates on this while making coffee in La cupola, a moka pot designed by Aldo Rossi for Alessi. ‘Since I was very young, I liked stories. I always ask myself, how could I tell an audience this story? Maybe the most important thing that I learned from theater is always speaking about an audience. Storytelling, for me, has been crucial.’
Behind a conical silver pot for olive oil bordering his stove, two more coffee makers by Rossi perch nearby. He mentions La cupola was a gift from a friend. It soon becomes clear that most of the things in his home studio are materializations of his life, his friendships, or his career. And often, the boundaries between even these three are understood to be quite porous. ‘You see? Design! Alessi is always with us,’ he says as he puts a second pot on the stove. For the first one, he had forgotten to add water, but was delightfully unbothered by the mistake. In his kitchen, there is a large work next to the window made by friends who had staged a performance in that very home.
things you can Learn from design, art, and beyond
As the conversation moves into his living room, a lamp made by Formafantasma frames a monumental, pink, upside-down triangle, a work by Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, also known as Puppies Puppies. ‘I learned something about theater through the point of view of Simone Farresin from Formafantasma, who comes from the world of design. This is why I love doing collaborations, especially with people who didn’t study theater.’ Cherstich had worked with the Milan-based design studio back in 2024 on Staging Modernity, a scenography in Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber on the occasion of Cassina’s 60th anniversary of industrially production of pieces by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Pierre Jeanneret. In that 2025 show during Milan Design Week, visitors could walk among the seats, amble onto the stage, and peer over the mezzanine – the scene blurred the line between spectator and the show itself.
This fluidity, between viewer, performer, and stage, is a hallmark of Cherstich’s work. In 2016, Operacamion, which was conceived for Teatro dell’opera di Roma, brought operas into the streets of the city, performed in an open container on a truck bed. ‘I am particularly proud that it has become a Harvard case study in culture and has even been cited recently by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as an example of how opera can reach new audiences and move beyond traditional theatre spaces,’ he says of the work that is still continuing today, nearly 10 years later, although under different direction.
‘as a spectator, you also have a responsibility’
Although theater is something of an ancient craft, Cherstich touches on how it may be even more imperative today to practice it. ‘I do think that today working in the fields of theater and performance is quite necessary because things are happening live between real bodies. Everything is becoming more and more digital, flat, transformable,’ he says of the current media ecosystem. ‘So you need to assume responsibility, both if you are on stage and in the audience. On stage, you have a responsibility because what you are telling to people comes from a very vulnerable but also powerful place. But as a spectator, you also have a responsibility. You are in front of real bodies. You need to own your point of view. You need to invest time. And I do think that today, this dynamic is quite incredible because it’s the opposite of what is happening outside the theater.’
in 2019, Cherstich directed the opera Turandot with graphics created by the art collective, AES+F
his projects and their ever expanding boundaries
He takes these lessons beyond the stage. Currently, Cherstich is the curator of The Estate of Larry Stanton, in line with his interest in the queer scene of New York in the 80s and 90s, which he explores in his performance, A Visual Diary. He’s gone on to create art books and even films on the likes of artist Lucia di Luciano and Annina Nosei, Basquiat’s first gallerist, both of whom were close friends of his. Thinking back on Cherstich’s website woes, it’s perhaps not because the artist struggles to define himself, but more because he pointedly defies the confines of the medium, the temporality, and the contexts presented in each of the projects he pursues.
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project info:
name: Fabio Cherstich | @fabio_cherstich
This interview is part of designboom’s SPECTATOR AND SPECTACLE chapter, asking how wonder gets built, presented in partnership with SolidNature, and how it might return some mystery to a world that has measured most of it away. Discover more stories that turn onlookers into participants, alter perception and disrupt the everyday here.
