This is the story of how, quite unpredictably, Finnish visual artist Kaarina Kaikkonen met the Italian theatre group “Teatro tascabile di Bergamo” for the creation of a participatory work of art. The story is told through images of the meetings, interviews, stories, and the ‘cultural barter’ that was put in place in order to collect the hundreds of shirts that were necessary for the work’s complex construction. The film shows the human relationships, personal memories, affections and exchanges that this long preparatory work created, or revived. A triple portrait is thus painted: of the visual artist, of the acting company, and of the community that welcomed these relationships. The outcome of the work is thus something like ‘a living fabric’. Theatre, this film tells us, is not necessarily an ephemeral event. It is indeed an art ‘with a tail’, that is, a form of art that lives long in the processes it activates.