From 2 to 21 April 2024 at Fonderie Limone Moncalieri Leonardo Lidi will direct Medea, from Euripides, one of the most raw and ruthless tragedies of antiquity.
Medea, a key character in classical literature and a timeless symbol of female sorrow, is the one who abandoned her own homeland to follow a man, who made her mother only to abandon her for a younger woman, in the name of her own gain.
Medea has no place or family to return to, rejected because she is in opposition to a personal and political project, that of Giasone, which rules out pity and sentiment.
Two worlds fated to a fatal collision, two entirely different visions of the world - male and female - that make this tragic tale as relevant and necessary as ever.
The show is starring Orietta Notari, Nicola Pannelli, Valentina Picello, Lorenzo Bartoli, Alfonso De Vreese, Marta Malvestiti, sets and lights Nicolas Bovey, costumes Aurora Damanti, sound Giacomo Agnifili and is produced by Teatro Stabile Torino – National Theatre.
Leonardo Lidi wrote in his notes: "In this post-pandemic three-year term, when I was asked to present a personal project, I told myself that before going back into the theater there was a need for willing empathy with respect to the audience, to chase away the fears of emotions, and above all I thought it was time to place love at the heart of the project, to hold a thirty-six-month long Symposium where we could expose ourselves to discuss the bizarre choices of our hearts. And so I directed Misanthrope by Molière and Come nei giorni migliori (How in the Best of Days) by young Diego Pleuteri. And around these plays how long we talked about love! By interviewing, studying, documenting what is happening to us when we lose our heads, when we don't manage the feeling but throw ourselves without protection.
And as a third stop? A Myth; an archetype that can help us put a semicolon in this journey into fantasy, an aid that can advise us whether to deviate or continue the path. Medea - a love story. There is one line, the second spoken by the protagonist, that every time I read in Umberto Albini's beautiful translation surprises me like a bolt of lightning: "I am suffering, do you understand that I am suffering?".
And then only later will the focus fall on the children and the curses reserved for them. But first there is a state of mind, a state of mind dictated by love. I am more interested in what came before: I am interested in studying the picture of this woman in love, betrayed by the man she loved and, finally, abandoned. "I am suffering, do you understand that I am suffering?.
This display of pain, this sorrow that cannot become silence, this perpetual sobbing that cannot stay locked in the body, but must be unleashed first in words and then in acts of blood."
From 9 until 28 April in national première at the Teatro Carignano in Turin, Stéphane Braunschweig, one of the leading directors of the contemporary theatre stage and Artistic Director of the Odéon - Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris, will direct La vita che ti diedi, by Luigi Pirandello.
The Director deepens his link with Pirandello's writing: after the international successes of Vestire gli ignudi, Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, I giganti della montagna and Come tu mi vuoi, he directs this new play for the Teatro Stabile di Torino. Written in 1923 for Eleonora Duse, La vita che ti diedi is the great dramatist's most poignant text on the theme of motherhood and mourning. «How can a mother survive the death of her son?» the playwright asks himself.
Simply by claiming that he is not dead. Or, more accurately, by pretending that he is alive. Pirandello makes our certainties, our preconceptions falter: despite knowing that reality will eventually put a stop to the illusion, he makes us realise how much we need illusions - but conscious illusions and not the lies we tell ourselves - to remain standing. How much we need theatre to face life.
On stage Daria Deflorian, Federica Fracassi, Cecilia Bertozzi, Fabrizio Costella, Enrica Origo, Fulvio Pepe, Caterina Tieghi, costumes and collaboration on sets Lisetta Buccellato, lights Marion Hewlett, sound Filippo Conti. A Teatro Stabile di Torino – National Theatre and Emilia Romagna Teatro ER T / National Theatre production.
Photo: (c) Luigi De Palma
