theatrical installation for 2 actors and 22 spectators
Trickster Teatro, Novazzano, Switzerland
Original idea: Trickster Teatro
Direction and dramaturgy: Cristina Galbiati
Actors: Cristina Galbiati and Ilija Luginbühl
Scenic space:Ilija Luginbühl
Sound design: Lara Persia
Costumes:Maurizio Cristina
Co-production: Trickster Teatro / Cinema Teatro Chiasso
In collaboration with: Operaestate Festival Veneto
The show lasts 55 minutes.
… Virtual perception, simulated tumult, negative mania: you could say that human beings, both in their public and private lives, have started living into a film. A new silence is born, nevertheless, a new silence with opposite dimensions, still and quick, positive and clear.
Philippe Sollers
Come una preghiera signals another step of the research on scenic space which has characterized Trickster Teatro’s poetics these years.
When – as in this case - the scenic installation becomes a way to explore expressive possibilities, the spectator’s role becomes part of the dramaturgy of the performance.
The prior condition of Come una preghiera is a completely white round room with 11 windows wide open and through which the 22 spectators witness the scenic action.
This space of non-being suspended over time could not be defined precisely; it could be an arena, a prison, the core of the labyrinth, a place where people wait and are judged. It is the symbol of those anonymous rooms – or rather non-rooms- of our times.
In a frantic and jerky modernity as a background, two figures move and oppose their inadequate selves to the whirling worldly show of images and feelings. The spectator seats behind the window and, as if he were in a live reality show, he plays several roles: the silent observer, the witness, the voyeur. The borders between the different roles are ephemeral and fragile.
Enclosed in their round trap, as modern Minotaurs from Borges’ books, the actors move in an hypothetic labyrinth of the mind – a stifling prison where doors are always open.
Come una preghiera is an attempt to cross the border between thought and action, an attempt to make the body of the actor become a stylistic characteristic and an expressive language.
The body turns into flesh and the unconscious, turning into muscles, is not strictly psychic.
As eyes wide open on present times, the windows seem to be the only possible key to interpret this beaten humanity.
Trickster Teatro
Founded by Cristina Galbiati and Ilija Luginbühl, Trickster Teatro was, from the beginning, meant to be a “bottega d’arte” focusing on the research and development of new techniques of expression without forgetting, nevertheless, the principles belonging to the Tradition. This has become more concrete when la casa del tabacco - a space for creation and experimentation - was created.
Lead by the idea that theatre cannot became a ‘dead art’ the group developed its own path that finds its roots in a ‘theatrical poetics’ able to escape from the classical structures of theatre stages to privilege the quality of the relationship between performer and audience.
Trickster Teatro productions are original creations; still now they have been presented in Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, India, Taiwan, Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador.
Besides the creation of theatre performances the group develops specific projects that can include a medley of different forms of expression.
Convincing New Theatrical Production of the Trickster Troupe
… A ritual in which time and space are utterly unclear – they overlap. Victim and executioner, beloved and lover, the abandoned, victims of everyday anxieties and different forms of paranoia, or, as the convincing and intriguing voice says, half beasts half children, overlap, change, mix. And while two asexual figures in the language of gestures speak about obsession, unease, compulsion, violence of a randomly chosen day in any of the world’s contemporary metropolises, those present discover that they are also a part of such humankind.
La Regione Ticino (Switzerland)
... A cylinder sealed from the outside, but characterised by eleven windows, each adjusted to the presence of two spectators, who bend over the white, sterile space, a non-place or a prison or a boxing ring where encounters and conflicts are to be evaluated (…) One and a thousand stories, to be interpreted and left to settle in mind, for a joyless end, which makes the darkness come down regardless of the blinding whiteness. An interesting proof which leaves room for carrying out new experiments by a developing troupe, capable of expressions that are never banal.
La Provincia (Italy)
This performance has been possible with the kind support of
Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council
