Motus (IT)
Frankenstein (a love story)
25. May @ 20:00 (doors open @ 19:00) + 26. May @ 19:00 (doors open @ 18:00)
My hideous progeny!
Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is the connective tissue of this “new creature.”
A monstrous project composed by stitching together different episodes and the desire to breathe life back into the inanimate, galvanizing it by breaking it down and reassembling literary pieces. A show about Frankenstein that is itself (a) Frankenstein.
The Chinese box structure of the book that Mary Shelley wrote when she was only nineteen years old and her own biography, which is so much reflected in the painful events of the unheard creature, are matter to start from in the composition – with the dramaturgical collaboration of Ilenia Caleo. The theme of the “monstrous offspring” that Shelley first devised – making a leap from the Gothic novel to the foundation of the science fiction novel, is later reimagined by many scholars as a figuration of the possible – figuration and fable of a nonreproductive world – with vivid contemporary ramifications in posthuman philosophy. Touching the nonhuman, the monstrous, the artificial, feeling its flesh. The dangerous boundary between the living and the nonliving. The processes of composition and decomposition.
Cells that self-regenerate outside the human body, reproduction hacking technologies and Artificial Intelligences in revolt… The night when Mary Shelley daydreams of Frankenstein is reminiscent of the night when the scientist wanders around collecting fragments of corpses, like the primitive night, the beginning of the world. Scenarios of creation, monstrous imagination.
Nature is in turmoil. In extreme, frozen, painful landscapes, two figures chase each other, seeking shelter.
Anger, love, disquiet, horror, and more love, love, an excess of unrequited love. “I neither saw nor heard of anyone like me” – like the human, unique of its kind, the creature is also unique. The radical loneliness of an unheard, untouchable creature who finds no one else to talk to, who can speak its name. It is on the borders that monsters proliferate. Between worlds.
And here, between the stitched seams of different fleshes and skins, this work tries to stand. The spawned monster is “an unfortunate,” “a wretch,” as one says of those who start at a disadvantage, those born not perfectly equipped for the adventure of the world: but let it be well remembered that monstrum comes from monēre, to warn, and in the warning there is always something prodigious…
Credits
Idea and direction by Daniela Nicolò & Enrico Casagrande
With Silvia Calderoni, Alexia Sarantopoulou, and Enrico Casagrande
Dramaturgy by Ilenia Caleo
Text editing and subtitles Daniela Nicolò
Translation Ilaria Patano
Assistant director Eduard Popescu
Set and costume Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande
Light design Theo Longuemare
Soundscapes Enrico Casagrande
Sound Martina Ciavatta
Sound abstract from Demetrio Cecchitelli, Dario Moroldo, David Lynch,
Wovenhand, Bon Iver, Djrum, Jon Hopkins, Arvo Part, Burial,
Fontaines D.C., Dans Dans, Mechanical Cabaret, Bones, Jessica Moss
Graphics Federico Magli
Video Vladimir Bertozzi
a Motus production with Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale, TPE – Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER (BE) and Kampnagel (DE), artistic residencies hosted by AMAT & Comune di Fabriano, Santarcangelo Festival, Teatro Galli-Rimini, Centro di Residenza dell’Emilia-Romagna “L’arboreto-Teatro Dimora | La Corte Ospitale”, Rimi-Imir (NO) and Berner Fachhochschule (CH),
with the support of MiC, Regione Emilia-Romagna.