Il risveglio
About this event
Wake up.
You must smell the red scent of morning.
Don’t be afraid.
It’s time to talk about the mistery of life.
I’ve always been attracted,
enthralled and scared by the darkness of the night.
Now I would like to go again.
To run again. To fly again.
With a voice that sings
and yells like a mad bird.
It is an awakening after the storm.
Pippo Delbono
There is a sort of slumber at the beginning of Awakening. That is both a personal and collective one. There is the awakening of the man who at the end of Love – Pippo Delbono’s previous work – went to lie beneath a dry tree that suddenly bloomed with flowers. And the man stayed there, half asleep in that slumber that left us silent and afraid. A slumber that he feels he needs to wake up from, expecting the possibility to face a reality that will be worse than the one he faced before and to see himself grow old. Before the pandemic that shut everyone in their houses. Before the war that burst at our doorstep. Before the coming back of ideologies that we thought belonged to the past.
Awakening is rooted in a personal experience and then unfolds in a feeling of loss that concerns many. A feeling that demands to be healed, but that only a gesture of solitary rebellion can cure. Starting from the acknowledgement of a fragility that is mirrored by the performance.
For the first time the play lacks the presence of texts written by the authors whom Pippo Delbono has loved and met in his travels toward his Ithaca, and that he has often reworked in order to own them more. To express the new pain that has invaded him and to summon the rebirth there are only his own words, the stories and poems that he has been writing for some time. These words give him the opportunity to speak a new truth, to narrate himself in his own weaknesses, fears, hopes. And yet it is not just a personal issue.
Before the will of starting to live again, the eye widens and embraces what surrounds it. “Is there anyone here?”, the artist asks himself in a barren space that could remind of a desert. A few essential elements on set, that shift dramatically the space, are not an impediment to the view but actually lead the eye beyond the things one can see.
The theatre made by Pippo Delbono starts all from music and follows the score of an inner rhythm. His style of composition is, once again, musical. Heartrending notes that play laments of love and tenderness lead the actors of the Company in a dance, a sacred ritual, perhaps a funeral. On the notes of the virtuoso cellist Giovanni Ricciardi, on stage with his instrument, and music pieces that hail from the memory of the ‘70s, Delbono repeats: “You must dance, dance in your war”.
Together with his Company, born through meetings with actors, with dancers but primarily with people coming from different places of life, Delbono in this show pays tribute to Bobò, a faithful stage companion who passed away in 2019 with whom he shared his life on and off the stage for more than 20 years.
Awakening is a show about our many falls and many rises, dedicated to all those who fell asleep and have then reawakened. And also to those who have yet to wake up.
Duration: 65 minutes without intermission
Tour
Artistic Data
light Orlando Bolognesi
costumes Elena Giampaoli
sound Pietro Tirella
chief machinist Enrico Zucchelli
organization Davide Martini
production assistant Riccardo Porfido
technical manager Orlando Bolognesi
tour technical staff Manuela Alabastro/Pietro Tirella (sound), Elena Giampaoli/Carola Tesolin (costumes), Orlando Bolognesi/Corrado Mura (lights), Enrico Zucchelli/Mattia Manna (set)
executive producer Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale (Italy)
co-producers Teatro Stabile di Bolzano (Italy), Teatro Metastasio di Prato (Italy), Théâtre de Liège (Belgium), Sibiu International Theatre Festival/Teatrul Național “Radu Stanca” Sibiu (Romania), Teatrul Național “Mihai Eminescu” Timisoara (Romania), Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Bucarest (Romania), TPE – Teatro Piemonte Europa/Festival delle Colline Torinesi (Italy), Théâtre Gymnase Bernardines Marseille (France)
in collaboration with Centro Servizi Culturali Santa Chiara di Trento (Italy), Le Manège Maubeuge – Scène Nationale (France)
Photos by Luca Del Pia
The dates from 17 to 20 October 2024 are realized within Opening – Italian showcase