The performance

The Clinic of the Blinded 

“Humanity has lost its pace” 

ACTORS: Carolina Albano, Fabio Ezechiele Sforzini, Julia Filippo, Luca Vonella, Sofie Sontheimer, Sonja Birgit Berg, Valerio Peroni. 

DRAMATURGY AND DIRECTING: Pierangelo Pompa.

LITTERARY ADVISOR: Daniele Aristarco. 

MUSIC: Laboratorio Altamira and Fabio Ezechiele Sforzini, from traditional and modern materials. 

TEXTS: Pierangelo Pompa, La Nuova Novella by Daniele Aristarco and quotations.

LANGUAGES: the main texts of the play are given in in English or Italian, depending on the country where it is performed. 

TIME: about 65 min. 

LIGHTS: Laboratorio di Altamira. 

STAGE SET: Laboratorio di Altamira. 

COSTUMES: Laboratorio di Altamira. 

PRODUCTION: Laboratorio di Altamira. Created during a residency at Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium. 

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS: see technical information

First performance: Holstebro (Denmark), February 2014. 

THE BLACK CHILD 

director's notes – in progress

Characters:

the Doctor

the three Blinded

the three Shadows

In the beginning there was a dream, alive as a revelation: a crowd of blinded people who have lost their pace. Then a memory is added to the dream: this blue cradle, covered by snow in the mountains of central Italy. 

The Clinic of the Blinded is born from a short-circuit between a dream and a memory, and from the face of a generation with its heart out of order, born too late to still believe in the old illusions but too early to forget and reinvent them. The Clinic of the Blinded is a play about the disenchantment and the lost technique of following a star. It talks about the few children still alive under the ruins of maturity without hope. 

Winter. Everyday life, perhaps in an institution for mental health.With wide-open eyes whose gaze is directed irrevocably inwards, the blinded grope about uncertainly, following the trajectories of a vision only accessible to them. Some have been blinded by anger or by a dream of love. Others have been blinded by the mocking spell of a utopia and some have pierced their own eyes so as not to see their failure. The repertory of blunders is very wide.

Immobilized in the waiting room, the blinded stare at an instant, which has gone astray, they chew on heroic prophecies that have become ridiculous. 

The book stays silent, the star is hiding, the future seems not to be provided for. Even Godot explicitly informed everybody that it's not worth waiting for him. The rest is a Babel of chaotic thoughts, labyrinths of grotesque and improbable gestures, tensions towards the invisible where the others are but the support of a private and obsessional ceremony.

The doctor wails ancient songs, as a father orphan of his own children. In the air thick with frost and silence is floating the distorted echo of a dream that once was.

But all the blinded people have a shadow that follows them, protecting their backs as an invisible nurse, black mirror and forbearing phantom, offering their arms to the Blinded, suggesting the Chant, striving to teach them the steps again.

The Doctor watches the scene thoughtfully. It could be that he has something in mind.

In fact, the distant melody is perhaps not entirely lost. The obsession of those Blinded step-by-step gains back its syntax. Under the guidance of the shadow-child it may reveal a hidden dance. The Babel of whispers could transform itself in a tender choir of revolt. Behind the alienated routine of a warm soup, an unpredictable nativity could perhaps be celebrated. 

And the black child could teach us to walk again.