Artistic residency towards "Frankenstein (a love story)"

Theatre

My hideous progeny!

Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus is the connective tissue of this “new creature.” A monstrous project composed by stitching together different episodes and the desire to breathe life back into the inanimate, galvanizing it by breaking it down and reassembling literary pieces. A show about Frankenstein that is itself (a) Frankenstein.
The Chinese box structure of the book that Mary Shelley wrote when she was only nineteen years old and her own biography, which is so much reflected in the painful events of the unheard creature, are the matter to start from in the composition – with the dramaturgical collaboration of Ilenia Caleo and original writing by Paul B. Preciado. The theme of the “monstrous offspring” that Shelley first devised – making a leap from the Gothic novel to the foundation of the science fiction novel, is later reimagined by many scholars as a figuration of the possible – figuration and fable of a nonreproductive world – with vivid contemporary ramifications in posthuman philosophy. Touching the nonhuman, the monstrous, the artificial, feeling its flesh. The dangerous boundary between the living and the non-living. The processes of composition and decomposition. Cells that self-regenerate outside the human body, reproduction hacking technologies and Artificial Intelligences in revolt… The night when Mary Shelley daydreams of Frankenstein is reminiscent of the night when the scientist wanders around collecting fragments of corpses, like the primitive night, the beginning of the world. Scenarios of creation, monstrous imagination. Nature is in turmoil. In extreme, frozen, painful landscapes, two figures chase each other, seeking shelter. Anger, love, disquiet, horror, and more love, love, an excess of unrequited love. “I neither saw nor heard of anyone like me” – like the human, unique of its kind, the creature is also unique. The radical loneliness of an unheard, untouchable creature who finds no one else to talk to, who can speak its name. It is on the borders that monsters proliferate. Between worlds. And here, between the stitched seams of different fleshes and skins, this work tries to stand. The spawned monster is ”an unfortunate,” “a wretch,” as one says of those who start at a disadvantage, those born not perfectly equipped for the adventure of the world: but let it be well remembered that monstrum comes from monēre, to warn, and in the warning there is always something prodigious…


We need Monsters
and we need to recognise
and celebrate
our own monstrosities.

(J. Halberstam)
.

from 22/05/2023 to 30/05/2023

directed by  Daniela Nicolò & Enrico Casagrande
with  Silvia Calderoni (and two performers to be defined)
dramaturgical collaboration  Ilenia Caleo and Paul B. Preciado
lights  Theo Longuemare
sound  Martina Ciavatta
scenic sculptures and masks  Nagi Gianni
graphics  Federico Magli
production  Francesca Raimondi
organization and logistics  Shaila Chenet
promotion  Ilaria Depari
communication  Dea Vodopi
international distribution  Lisa Gilardino

a Motus production with: Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale, TPE - Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER (BE) and Kampnagel (DE)
artistic residencies hosted by:  AMAT, Santarcangelo Festival, Teatro Galli-Rimini, La Corte Ospitale, Rimi/Imir (NO), Berner Fachhochschule (CH)
with the support of:  MiC, Regione Emilia-Romagna
.

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