Donna de paradiso
by Jacopone da Todi and Dante Alighieri
with Marco Barbieri, Novella Broccoli, Francesca Giardullo, Iuri Monti, Martina Olley, Alessandro Pieri, Francesca Quercioli, Stefania Zavalloni
choreography Rosita Di Firma
digital animation Claudia Cagneschi e Antonio Stincheddu
adaptation and direction Fabiola Crudeli e Walter Valeri
Sponsorship
Diocese of Cesena – Sarsina and District of Todi
The performance is freely taken from the “Laudi” by Jacopone from Todi (1230-1306) and the “Detto d’amore” and “Il Fiore” by Dante Alighieri. A staging of high cultural importance which put in direct contact with an archaic obsolte language both for the actors of Fuori Scena Theatre Company and for the audience, combining secular music and liturgical canto, reinterpretating an emotial sentitivity and a general vision of the world and of the piety of the laudi.
The project Donna de Paradiso was developed and articulated in different stages: the first step was the meeting with Walter Valeri and the Cantiere Internazionale Giovani in Forlì, which provided the first opportunity to go through the Laudi by Jacopone from Todi together with Il Fiore by Dante Alighieri and start working on them.
The aim was to bring those Laudi alive, which in themselevs are difficult to understand given that they are written in ancient Umbrian dialect. While bringing the text closer to current Italian assonance an attempt was made to maintain the fascination of its 13th century verse. The directing aimes giving a strong expressive power to words through an integration of text, choreography, music and scenography. The choice of reducing scenery, stems from the fact that the first aim is to evoke images and not to show what is told. These images have to blossom inside the spectator’s mind, thanks to the suggestive power of the word expressed by the actor. Few objects transform to assume other symbolic functions for the prosecution on stage with the poetic work. This essential scenery stimulates the audience with great emotion, from the opening of the curtain when a huge backdrop made up of hundreds of x-rays is lit up: it reminds us of an ancient internal suffrance infinitely multiplied. A staging that wants to interact with the different languages of the theatre in communicative ways, from the traditional ‘recited word’ to the more contemporary ‘digital projections’.
Of this text, so painfully human, we wanted to keep the religious sense: a double thread which links the man to the divine, in a relation of mutual need.
