written and performed by the detainee students
of the Institute of Art, prison section
with the extraordinary participation of Virginia Virilli
directed by Giorgio Flamini
stage elaboration Simone Bacci and Maria Paola Buono
Voices. Footprints. Gestures. Objects.
Traces of spaces
and structures. Signs of a vital presence that from a transparent cell
reproduced on a1:1 scale radiates onto the public, and beyond, like the
exploded wooden elements which compose the cell and covers the public to
become pure color in an indefinite horizon.
Pathetic
affectivity, conceived, created and staged by the students of the 1st,
2nd and 3rd classes of the Art Institute associated headquarters House
of Imprisonment, under the guidance of Prof. Giorgio Flamini is neither a
truth-show, nor a documentary: it is certainly a show that wants to
voice the "Voices from inside", the thoughts, the dreams of its
protagonists, in the daily gestures, the objects, in the significant
spaces, in the rhythms that mark the time of detention.
But
through the work of its Authors- Actors, the substance of truth of
Pathetic affectivity becomes substance of a re-elaboration where it is
the formal treatment that dominates.
And so the walking becomes almost like a Pina Baush performance, with its strict geometrical joints.
The
muffled voices of the courtyards become rap. The solitary reflection,
in its persistent repetition, bends to a low drone upon which to
interweave a crescendo of humoristic and self-ironic inlays. The
dialogues of awakening are transfigured into a sort of eidyllion with a
Theocritean flavor.
The talks represent the truth of gestures, of care, of affections with a contrapuntal treatment. Pathetic
affectivity
is, in many ways unsustainable, just like a truth that you would like
to conceal or remove. But it mainly wants to show that the
theatrical word and gesture, with the formal control that they require,
provide the access keys to the most complete and authentic ποίησις and
to spaces of incompressible freedom that it can open up to those who
reach it.
To all the students who contributed
to the production of Pathetic Affectivity and to Giorgio Flamini who led
them in the difficult art of inventio, my heartfelt thanks.
Prof. Roberta Galassi
(Headmaster)