Première 22/07/2021, Festival Welcome to Socotra, Fondazione Feltrinelli, Milan (IT)
Our children participate in the struggles of adults just as they participate in fact in the conditions dependent on their marginalisation. If possible, they participate and will participate, we hope, with greater consciousness and clarity than the generation before them.
La mensa dei bambini proletari (t/n: The Canteen for Proletarian Children) - Ombre Rosse - Nuova Serie - n 6 - 1974
We dedicate NA Creature to Ugo, Naples' adolescents and those of all the cultural peripheries.
We join the voice of the Comitato Verità e Giustizia per Ugo Russo (t/n: Truth and Justice Committee for Ugo Russo) and his family to demand the truth about his murder and to bring to light whether he was given the death penalty without trial.
concept and care Teatringestazione
directed by Gesualdi | Trono
dramaturg Loretta Mesiti
soundscapes and live music Alessandro Pezzella
video Antonio Arte
assistant director Giovanni Passariello
co-production Fondazione Feltrinelli e Teatringestazione in the frame of Atlante degli immaginari
photo ©Fondazione Feltrinelli
Atlante degli Immaginari is a project of cultural innovation across Italian territories promoted by Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli to follow the most innovative creative ferments. A journey born from the encounter between artistic sensibilities, local urgencies and a network of communities in Milan, Genoa, Naples and Taranto. A process of co-design - supported by Fondazione Cariplo - culminates in the national première at the Welcome to Socotra 2021.
Thanks for the rich dialogue:
Comitato Verità e Giustizia per Ugo Russo; Bianca Verde (DAMM e Lo sgarrupato); Giuseppe Carini (Mensa dei Bambini Proletari) with Roberto (Cyop&Kaf); Giovanni Laino (Fondatore di AQS – Associazione Quartieri Spagnoli), Alessandro Pezzella (Educatore – AQS) with Giovanni; Valeria Anatrella (Cooperativa il Grillo Parlante) with Gaetano (Educatore di prossimità – Centro Altra Casa) with Marika, Luca, Anna; Nicola Laieta con Giuseppe di Somma (Maestri di Strada – Associazione Trerrote)
synopsis
We are in the child Dionysus' glance in front of the mirror/screen a moment before the Titans arrive to tear him to pieces, where the seduction of the reflected image takes place. The child god sees his body indistinguishably confused with what surrounds him; prey to the greedy, revealing, a dazzling impulse that moves the course of becoming.
Cement and metal sheets mixed with liquid crystals and clothes hung out in the "Sole Mio" (t/n: "Own Sun", a famous Neapolitan song) dry the imagination of street kids, who live in the asphyxiated folds of an insufficient society. They pursue an imaginary life, the serial production of a state of deprivation, an emptiness to be filled, a hollow life, like Greek Naples. Young people's imagination is polluted by an excess of images of success, linked to the ostentation of the superfluous, composed in a false narrative: those who do not work win or obtain what they want by force. The perception of an imminent danger leads to the acceptance of a permanent state of emergency: educational, housing, work, criminal, in virtue of which people surrender their freedom by bending to a conditioned life. No one can claim to be innocent.
Poverty in education is a precise political strategy. It is not just about the inadequacy of schools but the indifference of an entire country.
Ugo Russo died of a lack of education when he was only 15 years old: the powerless school, which he abandoned as soon as he could, adolescence of poorly paid and humiliating jobs, and an attempted robbery that ended in tragedy.
tech rider
people
/6 on travel: director, performer, video director, musician, assistant director, production manager
/4 local participants: 15-year-old boy; 3 school teachers
stage
/company equipment: 9 tablet + stands; 1 desk lamp; playstation
/space equipment: video projector; background screen (or white wall); school desk and chair; dedicated internet connection
light
5 spotlights 1000 and flags; 1 profiler
audio
Mixer; PA system; 4 headset microphones