Bestie di scena

For a long time now Emma Dante's language has been made up of dialects, gestures, and accents. It is a southern language, trivial and popular, which the Sicilian director ennobled with metaphors and pushed to its limits within surrealist situations. Words, bodies, and rhythms which highlight, not without imagination, the brutality of the human comedy and which stand up to remind us of the social and political engagement of a community, whether a family or the community of the theatre. With Bestie di scena, Emma Dante continues her quest for honesty. No text, no set, no costumes, no music. But actors. Actors left to their own devices, actors up to the challenge. From backstage, objects, clothes, words come flying at them in unexpected ways. Forced to survive just as the group falls apart, they start transforming over and over again: into animals, children, idiots... For Emma Dante, who creates here a true poetic art in her quest for “the juice of drunkenness and torment,” actors are on the frontline of this attempt to break down the conventions of theatre. We are all those “imbeciles, without structure and without mask, facing the tragedies of the modern world.”

Direction, design, stage design Emma Dante
Lights Cristian Zucaro

With Elena Borgogni, Sandro Maria Campagna, Viola Carinci, Italia Carroccio, Davide Celona, Sabino Civilleri, Alessandra Fazzino, Roberto Galbo, Carmine Maringola, Ivano Picciallo, Leonarda Saffi, Daniele Savarino, Stéphanie Taillandier, Emilia Verginelli
And Gabriele Gugliara, Daniela Macaluso

Production Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d'Europa, Atto Unico Compagnie Sud Costa Occidentale
Co-production Theatre Biondo de Palerme, Festival d'Avignon
With the support of Institut culturel italien de Marseille for the 71st edition of the Festival d'Avignon