PRODUCTION
Presentation of Mucche selvagge (Wild cows)
Ignoring what you could have seen
was your salvation.
Knowing what I lost,
my condemnation.
Written precisely for La Quarta Scimmia, Mucche selvagge (Wild cows) was finalist at the Premio Sipario 2012 where it obtained a Jury’s Special Mention. The text was first published on October 2012’s issue no. 749-50 of the monthly review Sipario, and is currently searching for a production.
The play – that echoes with implicit allusions to Becket’s monsters – starts with two characters who unwillingly find themselves in an apocalyptic context: fainted after the impact of what seems to have been an earthquake, Alicante and Felippo wake up in the desolation of a relic city, all dust, rubble and dead dogs. Completely blinded, they cannot but imagine, intuit and touch such desert. Apparently strangers to one another, stuck into disarmed bodies facing the solitude of speechless darkness, the two are forced to wait together for some elusive rescue which progressively prove unlikely to come. The wasted land will soon turn into an open air prison and then into a battlefield, a proper ring where, in the midst of frantic dialogues, not only verbal matches will be fought thereby structuring an unexpectedly more and more complex narrative.
Despite the fact that Alicante and Felippo met randomly, they actually share a history, a past strongly connected to their blindness and to the dramatic series of events which lead to their loss of sight. And still, although the dramaturgic frame would allow for vaguely noir developments, the story is merely a pretext leading somewhere else: in the folds of a universe inhabited by ghastly and dishonest monsters such as guilt, exchangeability of the victim and perpetrator’s roles, abandonment to the whims of a hidden god and that insatiable thirst for vengeance which typically lay in the hearts of hypocrites.
The whole of it is seen through eyes which the impossibility to make sense of the world in the darkness forces into an inventive envisioning. Forcibly made to see characters who do not see and to fight against the drifts of their imagination, the spectator’s will face a disarming mismatch between form and content thereby assuming unwillingly the point of view of an impotent, idle god, too distant to have a body, a voice or even a name.
The author
Ade Zeno was born in Turin in 1979.
After several stories in collections and reviews, his first novel Argomenti per l’inferno (by No Reply publisher) was published in 2009 and became finalist at the Premio Tondelli 2009.
He has also written and directed a number of award-winning short feature films. As a playwright, he is currently part of La Quarta Scimmia theatre company for which he has written the plays Velvet Bunny (awared the Premio Nuove Sensibilità 2010) and Gesù Cristo + Wonder Woman (finalist for the Premio Scenario 2011).
In 2010, along with the collective Sparajurij, he founded the international literary review Atti impuri.
The director
Chiara Villa moved her first steps on stage in 1993 as assistant director and production designer in a students’ production of Aristofane’s THE BIRDS directed by Giuseppina Carutti at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro and at the International Festival of classic theatre for young people in Palazzolo Acreide (Syracuse). Soon after she founded Pigrecoerre company with which she signed her first direction of Tennessee Williams’ THE GLASS MENAGERIE.
After this experience, she created different shows, often adapting for the stage authors of the XXth century like Orwell, Queneau, Tremblay. As a college student, she also perfected her education at Milan’s CRT- theatre research centre. At the beginning of 2001 she graduated magna cum laude in history of modern and contemporary theatre at the University of Bologna under the supervision of Giuseppe Liotta and Claudio Meldolesi. On that same year she moved to Amsterdam to live abroad for her first time.
In 2002 she transferred to France where she attended Paris’ Sorbonne and in 2003 obtained a Master degree in Theatre and performing arts under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Ryngaert. Between 1995 and 2003 her interest for opera and musical theatre led her to become an assistant director in many theatres such as Milan’s Alla Scala; Warsaw’s National Theatre where she worked with Michael Znaniecki; Parma’s Opera House where she assisted Lorenzo Arruga; Bologna European cultural capital city 2000 where she worked with Emanuele Montagna for different productions. In Paris she assisted Laurence Renn at the Théâtre de la Tempête and Francesca Zambello at the Opéra National de Paris.
As Art director of Villatheatre company, she set up several shows among which PRESENCE, written with Murielle Vincent, performed at Bouffon Théâtre of Paris, F. Léhar’s THE MERRY WIDOW in Colmar’s Théâtre Municipal and in Mulhouse’s Théâtre de la Sinne, D. Glanert’s NIJINSKY’S DIARY in Montepulciano’s Poliziano Theatre, Arnold Schönberg’s recital CABARET D'HISTOIRES at the Étè cour Étè jardin Festival in Strasburg and 1913, which she wrote and performed at Strasburg’s Théâtre Taps-Scala in 2009/2010.
In 2010/2011 she presented Dario Fo’s MISTERO BUFFO at the Hall del Chars Theatre in Strasburg and Garcia Lorca’s THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA. In November 2012 she presented OFFEMBACH ET LA DIVA ORTENSE in many French Theatres.
In April 2013 she is going to France and Portugal to present the whole of Dario Fo’s MISTERO BUFFO, the last representations of which are going to be held at the National Drama centre Comédie de l'Est in Colmar. Later, a direction of CARMEN in Montepulciano and Eric Maestri’s VISIONI at the Venice Biennale will follow.