by Simone Derai, Luca Altavilla
with Luca Altavilla, Marco Menegoni
direction Simone Derai
sound design Mauro Martinuz
dramaturg Sergia Adamo, Lisa Gasparotto
masck Alessandra Faienza
costum Simone Derai, Sara Favero
scenes Simone Derai, Elisabetta Ferrandino
produced by Thymele soc. coop. impresa culturale e creativa con il contributo della Regione Friuli Venezia Giulia

National Premiere

The new work by Anagoor with Luca Altavilla is a chant to the actor, the trickster, the fool. Here, Harlequin is not merely a mask, but a character-man who interrogates the present: what can Harlequin still tell us in a tragic century? Throughout history, we find him leading the host of the dead in the guise of the demon Herlechinus, later entering medieval folklore, tied to the world of superstition and the afterlife, until assuming the traits of the buffoon in the literary tradition. From the sixteenth century, Harlequin takes the stage in the Commedia dell’Arte as a lively, carefree, cheerful servant, sometimes diabolically cunning, yet his black mask retains the echo of the medieval demon, capable of evoking both fear and joy. And we leap forward to the twentieth century. Harlequin is the last man before mass homogenization; Picasso uses him as an emblem of a poetics of individual resistance against the tragedy of the present. Enrico Baj, in The Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli, includes a Harlequin who is disjointed and shattered, yet still recognizable. Thus, Harlequin does not die, but recomposes himself, stitching together the pieces of past tragedies within the tragedy of (our) present.