Studio Melato Theatre
from May 21st to 26th
Underground
Fire was the cure
Freely inspired by Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
A production
Metastasio Theater of Prato, Underground,
Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Theater of Europe
and Emilia Romagna ERT Theater / National Theatre
From 21 to 26 May, after the world premiere at the Teatro Metastasio in Prato, the Sotterraneo collective, artists associated with the Piccolo, returns to the Teatro Studio Melato with an original work, freely inspired by Ray Bradbury’s 1953 masterpiece. The show – co-produced by Teatro Metastasio, by Sotterraneo, by the Piccolo Teatro di Milano and by ERT-Emilia Romagna Teatro, and created with the support of Centrale Fies / Passo Nord – rereads Fahrenheit 451 through the lens of the present, to ask ourselves, together with the public, where the risk of totalitarian tendencies lurks today.
“You don’t need to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” In 1953, Ray Bradbury imagines a dystopian future where reading is forbidden. Anyone caught doing so, or possessing books, is arrested, while the television screens, constantly turned on, alienate people’s free time. In the company of Fahrenheit 451, the mere attempt to think generates a sense of physical discomfort and the fire brigade is used to start fires, rather than to extinguish them, with the aim of setting the books on fire and capturing their owners. As in all totalitarian regimes, there is a clandestine community of dissidents, the book-people, who undertake to learn by heart the great classics of world literature, in the hope of saving them from oblivion and passing them on to future generations.
Seventy-one years after the publication of Bradbury’s masterpiece and fifty-eight after the release of François Truffaut’s film of the same name in cinemas, the Sotterraneo collective, associated with the Piccolo and already the protagonist of last season with a solo exhibition, has signed a new original work, which draws free inspiration from the novel.
«The book came out about 70 years ago – explain Sara Bonaventura, Claudio Cirri and Daniele Villa – but it is set in the future, that is, in the 20s of the 21st century, that is, today. But you are in the 21st century and you are reading this text, so was Bradbury wrong? It depends on how we understand dystopia: a prediction about the future that at a certain point is confirmed/denied or an alarm about the present that continues to be renewed? Fire was the cure crosses and rereads freely Fahrenheit 451, consumes it as one does with a beloved book, read a thousand times and dragged to a thousand places, dirties it, forgets it somewhere and then finds it again, while the cover fades, the paper comes apart and the pages fill with notes, cards , bookmarks and memories. Five performers retrace the story of the novel, identify with the characters, move horizontally mapping the shadow cones, the things that Bradbury does not explain or tell us, creating parallel narrative lines, theoretical deviations, also constructing the chronicles of an intermediate time between our present and an anti-cultural future in which stupidity saves us from the burden of complex thought. What if Bradbury was just a few years wrong, if Fahrenheit 451 if it really happened, what would we do?”
Small Studio Theatre (via Rivoli, 6 – M2 Lanza)
from 21 to 26 May 2024
Fire was the cure
freely inspired by Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Underground creation
concept and direction Sara Bonaventura, Claudio Cirri, Daniele Villa
with Flavia Comi, Davide Fasano, Fabio Mascagni, Radu Murarasu, Cristiana Tramparulo
written by Daniele Villa
lights Marco Santambrogio
stage clothes Ettore Lombardi
plays Simone Arganini
choreography by Giulio Santolini
props Eva Sgrò
technique Monica Bosso
company administrator Luisa Bosi
production Teatro Metastasio di Prato, Sotterraneo, Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa, Emilia Romagna ERT Theater / National Theater
with the support of Centrale Fies / Passo Nord
artistic residencies Fondazione Armunia, La Corte Ospitale, Centrale Fies / Passo Nord
Sotterraneo is an Associate Artist of the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, is part of the Fies Factory project and is resident at the ATP Teatri of Pistoia
Times: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, 7.30 pm; Wednesday and Friday, 8.30pm; Sunday, 4pm
Duration: 90 minutes without intermission
Prices: stalls 40 euros, balcony 32 euros
Information and reservations 02.21126116 – www.piccoloteatro.org
