Artists and young citizens on stage in Manfredonia with ‘Pace

180 people looking for Peace. In Manfredonia there is anticipation for ‘Peace – from Aristophanes’, the community theater production of Bottega degli Apocrifi. The show, on stage on Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 April at 9pm, is the fifteenth appointment of ‘Futura’, the prose season of the Teatro Lucio Dalla organized by the Municipality of Manfredonia, Teatro Pubblico Pugliese and Bottega degli Apocrifi.

The Apulian company, once again, has chosen to concentrate its theatrical practice on an artistic reflection linked to the community, its dreams and its needs. After the success of ‘Birds’, the political word of Aristophanes returns which accompanied a process of participation activated with the collective mobilization ‘Call for Peace’, a path of approach to the show which, from March to today, has proposed 5 workshops free theater for children aged 11 to 13 in the 5 comprehensive schools of the city of Manfredonia (including the Zapponeta branch), 1 choral workshop for children at the Croce School, one activated in collaboration with the Notarangelo/Rosati Institute of Foggia is a free theatrical and musical event open to citizens aged 14 to 30 at the ‘Lucio Dalla’ Municipal Theatre.

Of the over 200 participants in the workshops, 170 will be on stage in the show alongside the actors and musicians of the company for a production that challenges the already seen and the usual and asks, in an almost provocative way, “What is Peace? Where can it be found? Who should you root for?”.

‘Peace’. In this time of war the text ‘Peace’, written by an Aristophanes in his early twenties, tired of the long war that devastated his city, arrives with explosive force between our bodies and our gazes, and drags us with him into a spectacle which sees a large chorus of citizens on stage. A collective ritual of widespread theatricality, where teenagers and children become living theatre, together with musicians and actors. Here we are then in our Athens, torn apart by a war that has lasted for so long that we have gotten used to it; and there he is the farmer Trygaeus, who instead doesn’t get used to it, doesn’t resign himself and with his eyes and shouts to the sky tries to attract Zeus’s attention.

What are your intentions up there? Wipe out the earth with wars? No response comes from heaven, until Trygaeus gets a bizarre idea: to go and knock on the doors of Olympus to ask for explanations. Trygaeus is a fool in the eyes of his servants, in the eyes of his own daughters and probably also in the eyes of all of us who watch him raise a beetle that will take him flying up to the sky. After all, it’s not crazy who doesn’t give up when everyone around has already said “at this point”, who tries ways that no one has yet attempted, who persists in imagining a world different from the way we know it?

‘Peace – from Aristophanes’ is a production of Bottega degli Apocrifi. Written by Cosimo Severo and Stefania Marrone. Original music and arrangements by maestro Fabio Trimigno. The musicians are Vincenzo Aiace (trumpet), Michele Rignanese (trumpet/marimba), Antonio Riccardo (sax/piano), Fabio Trimigno (violin/piano), Francesca Gesualdi (cello), Matteo Fioretti (guitars), Andrea Stuppiello (drums) . The ticket for the show costs 12 euros (first sector audience), 10 euros (second sector audience), 6 euros (gallery).

For information call the numbers 0884.532829 – 335.244842 or write to [email protected].