Dante’s Divine Comedy begins with an “I” who is lost in a “dark wood” which is not simply a forest at night, but a wilderness of all fear, all anguish, all failure. It takes courage to admit you’ve lost your way, but that courage will guide us into the light. Marco Martinelli, seven-time winner of the Ubu Prize (one of the most important awards for Italian theatre) as playwright, director, and teacher, will work with participants on the first two cantos of the Inferno which describe Dante lost in the woods, his anguish, and his courage to wield a poetry of hope to overcome that fear: a poetry that becomes a saving gift for us all. The current century and the one before have specialized in Infernos with no way out. But no matter how evil grabs us by the throat, we find the means to rise again. We know the stars point us to our destiny.
It is precisely there in the dark, when the curtain seems to have come down forever, that we find the strength for an incredible leap into the Good. The poet whispers in our ear, “the good that I found there,” from pitch darkness we set out on our journey to the light. Paradise is already here; in the first step we take away from despair.
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