_COME UNA PREGHIERA

Theatrical installation for 2 actors and 22 spectators

[...] 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.
 
With the support of: Pro Helvetia / DECS Repubblica e Cantone Ticino – Fondo Swisslos / Ernst Göhner Stiftung / Sophie und Karl Binding Stiftung / Stiftung Lis und Roman Clemens / Erns und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung / Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung / Jürg Gorge Bürki Stiftung