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Postilla
Semiramis
In Festa
InvisibilMente
Losing face
THE SANDMAN
CAPRICCIO
IN THE MANNER
OF HOFFMANN
by Consuelo Battiston, Gianni
Farina, Alessandro Miele
direction Gianni Farina
music Stefano De Ponti
lighting and technical direction Robert
John Resteghini
with Tamara Balducci, Consuelo
Battiston, Tolja Djokovic, Francesco Ferri,
Alessandro Miele, Mauro
Milone
assistant director Chiara Fallavollita
costumes Elisa Alberghi
company technician Sergio Taddei
stagehand Andrea Bulgarelli
photography Arianna Lodeserto
drawing and graphics Marco
Smacchia
scenes
created in the workshop of Emilia Romagna Theatre Foundation
production Emilia Romagna Theatre Foundation,
Festival delle Colline Torinesi,
European Union Culture
Programme within the Progetto Prospero
thanks to Marco Cavalcoli and Chiara Lagani, Santarcangelo dei
Teatri/Santarcangelo 41, Teatro Fondamenta Nuove, Compostc/Valtorto,
perAspera/Drammaturgie Possibili - Festival di Arti Contemporanee, all
participants of the UBIQ project workshops
See
video trailer by Davide Maldi
The sandman - Music for the theatrical show by Stefano
De Ponti
This
Capriccio is, first of all, a labyrinth.
It is a game of Chinese boxes, an endless story in which to lose
oneself.
It is the tableau vivant of a still life.
In Hoffmann's tale the characters fade into the grey folds of everyday life,
like automatic reflexes of the same individual. The
restlessness generated by the Fantastic, the Disturbed,
the Bizarre pushes the student Nathaniel towards a reckless awareness of this
dulling mechanism, but an enormous gulf exists between desire and action.
Neurosis supplants the contemplation in the eternal conflict between inner
images and the outer world.
The formal challenge consists of lighting a magic lantern capable of
appearing and disappearing; a bearer of paradoxical overlapping contexts,
calling into question - in a Hoffmannesque manner - what our eyes witness:
the constructed frame that we call reality.
Benevolent spectator,
Do you like this preview?
Perhaps a little too intimidating. Although, the conclusion of
"Benevolent spectator, do you like this preview?" shifts the form
of address, don't you think?
Pity that what we define as “the conclusion” is not a real
conclusion. And so on, further phrases, like this or others, will follow the
expression “and so on”.
Apologies for all this
beating around the bush, but we are simply unable to conclude this speech, we
just can't get our heads around it.
Even
as the situation comes to a head, the problem remains unresolved.
How can it really be finished off?
Well, one could write "the end", if only these words were part of
the finale.
Alas, no, these words constitute nothing more than a preview of the show.
How about this: suspend proceedings, we'll talk about it after the show.
If only we were talking!
But the idea's not bad, that is, the idea implicit in the statement
"suspend proceedings".
Let's listen, if one may say "let's listen" in reference to the
silence of the printed word.
Perhaps "follow it" is more apt and even sounds better. But let’s
forget about sounds, let’s follow it finally without adding anything
after the exhortation “follow
The drama is
freely adapted from the short-story “The sand-man” by Ernst
Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann using as inspiration all his work says well.
Hoffmann is a visionary writer, who investigates topics such as the loss of
the sense of reality and the confusion that comes from it.
In the novel we find suspended and hypnotic atmospheres, sudden changes of
perspective that modify our point of view on reality, opening new horizons in
cognitive abilities and disclosing the society that imprisons the brave
characters, who are fighting against ordinariness.
Together with these suggestions from Hoffmann, Menoventi take some cues even
from other authors: Adolfo Bioy Casares, Philip K. Dick and David Lynch.
In L’uomo della sabbia characters are dip into boredom and in greyness
of ordinariness. The gap between wish and action is extremely wide.
The challenge is that of reducing the gap, creating a system in which
everything happens at the same time, as an antidote against boredom. The aim
is that of getting to a new situation fighting against dichotomies like
positive-negative, before-after, high-low, logic-illogic. To imagine in this
way a change of perspective following the linearity of events that produces
paradoxes. These paradoxes are shown in the dramaturgical choice of dividing
the action in Zones that host different levels of representation, which have
the peculiarity of sudden shifts through the overlapping of different
situations which are breaking down the narrative coherence in a way that the
audience is brought to think about what happened until that moment and
putting everything under investigation to understand if it has been real or
not.
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