by Alessandra Ventrella, Rocco Manfredi, Riccardo Reina
director Alessandra Ventrella
cast Rocco Manfredi e Francesco Napoli
light design Emiliano Curà
sound design Dario Andreoli
artistic residencies UOT Teatro alla Corte di Giarola, Teatro delle Briciole
In 2008, the British anthropologist Daniel Miller published The Comfort of Things, a collection of portraits outlined after visiting a bunch of houses in a street of London. George is the main character of the first portrait, “Empty”. «With George […] one simply couldn’t escape the conclusion that this was a man, more or less waiting for his time on earth to be over, but who at the age of seventy-six had never yet seen his life actually begin. And, worse still, he knew it.»
An eternal silence punctuated by habit.
An old man, alone, constantly half asleep, moving forward by inertia, as if pushed by a relentless mechanic device.
The man drags himself in the hallways of his empty house, always going back to the same armchair.
His only contact with the outside world comes with the words flowing out from TV and newspapers.
But today is not just any other day, even if he does not seem to remember.
Another picture of himself seems to rise inside him, awakening his numb body.
The light breaks in, shadows multiply and the line between reality and imagination become evanescent.
The mechanical device of his endless existence is falling apart, showing its real appearance.
Can we break the mechanism?
Welcome to Homologia.
Homologia is both a study of “what is human” and of “what repeats identically”.
Homologia is a telescopic vision of the man, starting from the man itself and willing to offer a detailed radiography of it.
A great illusion, an impossible party, hundreds of failures.
A house through whose doors we access to rooms filled with surprises, forgotten mirrors and stairways to the abyss.
The face leading us through the hallways seems to be forcing itself into a mask with one single expression: an inanimate being in a world of animate things.
Special Prize Scenario Award 2015
Finalist project In-Box Award 2017
“The purity and freshness of a young company expressing deep cohesiveness in aim and perspective, the unexpected recourse to traditional language to tell the loneliness of an old man in a metropolitan environment, observed by a poetical perspective and through oniric transformation, in a heartbreaking game of dualism. The challenge of a silent, wordless way of making theater, that recalls Beckett, Pinter, Kantor for its simplicity, that looks for a contemporary path for puppetry. A delicate epiphany joined to the humble awareness of a training still in fieri.”
Scenario Award 2015, Jury’s motivation
“Looking back at tradition with purity, DispensaBarzotti created the little cosmogony of a human, humble universe, timeless and contemporary at the same time, whose sadness is transformed in a call for illusion.”
Francesca Di Fazio for PAC – Pane Acqua Culture
“Precise, rigorous timing, sharp changes, everything is greatly balanced and neatly crafted despite the young age of the duo, who carries us into the magic atmospheres masterfully created by Slava.”
Tommaso Chimenti Bencini for Il Fatto Quotidiano