10 mg
by Maria Teresa Berardelli
Special mention at the Hystrio Scritture di Scena Awards, 2015
with Andreapietro Anselmi, Carolina Leporatti, Davide Lorino, Francesca Agostini, Lucio De Francesco
Director: Elisabetta Mazzullo
Sets and Costumes: Anna Varaldo
Light Design: Jacopo Valsania
Music: Bettedavis
10 mg will be staged in 2021 and included in the Teatro Stabile di Torino programme.
What is this play about? Its main focus is the commodification advertising makes of human health. Advertising shifts our perception of daily complaints and is making drugs increasingly necessary. Clearly, some diseases are serious, and indeed their only cure can be pharmacological treatment. However, other less severe conditions can hardly be defined as 'diseases'. They could probably be treated in other ways. It is here that the advertising system kicks in. However, this is not the only important issue addressed by a play marked by its original writing and directorial approach. At the same time, it also explores the main concerns we all face: love, fear, loneliness, desire, disappointment and frustration.
"10 mg, Maria Teresa Berardelli's work - explains its director - is perfectly situated in the scenario of today's daily lives. The world is slowly but surely changing into spheres inhabited by living beings as well as the pain and discomfort that intrude with force into our daily lives. The world's ills are part of the play's everyday discussions and can be found in the minor difficulties that have to be addressed.
However, owing to a singular sense of aphasia and the loss of the right words to say, i.e. good words that can heal the soul and help one to express suffering, one ends up becoming solely dependent on 10mg pills, which seem to instantly alleviate and heal the depths of despair and loneliness with which life inevitably confronts us. However, this may not be enough. Five characters, five men and women struggling with their weaknesses, with their clumsy attempts to withstand the beckoning of death, resisting through dialogue, listening or perhaps not listening, through anger, through struggles, through dance, through music, in a single essential word, through love. Maria Teresa Berardelli portrays five intertwined human beings with remarkable elegance and carefully chosen words, five lonely lives.
What emerges against this setting is that, if we do not come to terms with pain without fear or hypocrisy, as quickly as possible, that same pain will overwhelm and divide us. The cast members felt strongly about the project. They wanted to share this idea of rebirth, reopening and reconnecting with the local and theatre community and, above all, with the public. A vital sense of urgency prompted them to communicate, through their art, with the hearts of a multiplicity of individuals.
10 mg is the weight of a pill, but it could equally be the weight of a small balloon that is released into the sky, in hopes that someone will see it, that someone will smile and feel encouraged… and feel less alone”.
