LA MENZOGNA

When we went to the factory for inspection. More than by the burnt area, I was struck by all the rest – the desolation, the sadness, the death the factory emanated. My journey inside the factory started from this. I needed to start from that pain trying to enter its depth, avoiding the pietism arising just by hypocrisy. (Pippo Delbono)

“The Lie” starts from the tragic episode of the fire at Thyssen Krupp Industries in Turin which killed seven workers. But it does not deal just with that factory and the sorrow linked to it or the endless series of the so-called “white deaths”. As the title states, this production reveals in Delbono’s visionary and poetic art “the lie” as a widespread evil which is difficult or impossible to escape. And, once again, the main key of this play is the awareness of sorrow.

“The Lie” opens in full silence. Silence and memory are his starting point. Later on Delbono evokes other memories, further burnt, trapped and neglected bodies. So the author wishes to get to the bottom and go beyond political and theatrical lies.

“The Lie” arises from the need of truth, removing the lies which mark everyone’s life out, unmasking the false play of representation, becoming a political play through the poetry and the warning against racism, creeping fascism, violence and ignorance.

Because I can’t take it anymore, I can’t control myself anymore, fuck all these people, with their own little story, in their little corner, their little seat, all these faces, fuck everything. I feel like beating. I want to beat the lady gazing from her window, the Arab guy singing to himself, the one playing his music at the end of the aisle, the crazy old lady. I’ve had enough of all their faces, of all this mess and I need to beat. I want to beat old ladies, Arabs, tramps, gypsies, fags, wall tiles, train coaches, ticket inspectors, cops. I need to beat vending machines, billboards, street lights, this disgusting scent, this disgusting smell, this disgusting noise, prostitutes, perverts, cemeteries…

This extract by Koltès and other literary materials gradually form the author’s discourse about the subject, with surreal and dreamlike images. Extracts from Shakespeare which aren’t performed but which arise like screams of the soul. An emotional tissue of sounds which range from opera to tango, from Stravinsky, to Wagner, to Juliette Greco’s voice.

La Menzogna PROMO from Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione on Vimeo.
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