At the Biennale Teatro the protagonist on Friday 28 June is Back to Back TheatreThe Australian company, recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 52nd International Theatre Festival, presents the Italian premiere of the show “Food Court” at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale in Venice, at 10 pm.
Back to Back Theatre: «We are people who put on shows»
«We are people who make shows»: this is how we present ourselves Back To Back Theatre – namely Simon Laherty, Sarah Mainwaring, Scott Price – the company from Geelong, in South East Australia, founded in 1987 by an ensemble of actors with cognitive disabilities and today led by director Bruce Gladwin.
“We are not afraid to show the darker side of reality”
Back To Back tells the story of contemporaneity without offering its audience easy solutions: “we are not afraid to show the coldest and darkest side of reality”, writes the company, which boasts 22 international awards collected over thirty years.
Back to Back Theatre is the first disabled company to receive the Golden Lion
First disabled company to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Back to Back Theatre arrives in Italy for the first time with “Food Court”, halfway between performance and concert: it brings on stage three actresses – Sarah Gonion, Tamika Simpson, Sarah Mainwaring – together with the jazz band The Neck, to tell a story of bullying and rebirth .
«For a long time it seemed that people with disabilities were playing victims – explains Bruce Gladwin -. In “Food Court” we wanted to create a work in which an actor with a disability plays a character capable of doing harm. The show does not aim to talk about disability. But it raises the question: are the characters portrayed disabled or not? The “meaning” within Back to Back’s work has to do with who the artists are, what they represent, and what can be projected onto them.”
Tomorrow appointment with the stage readings by Eliana Rotella and Rosalinda Conti
Also on Friday 28 June the appointment with the new dramaturgy is renewed in the Sale d’Armi of the Arsenale with the stage readings of “Livido”, the text by Eliana Rotella directed by Fabio Condemi (5pm) and “This is how things were when the light was born”, the text of Rosalinda Conti edited by the director, author and performer Martina Badiluzzi (ore 20).
Pangaro’s “Bolide” and Gob Squad’s “Elephant in rooms”
The appointment with “Bolide – Deus ex machina”, the site-specific performance by Elia Pangaro which questions the hyper-acceleration of contemporary life (6pm) while in Forte Marghera, the multiscreen video installation “Elephants in rooms” continues, a light-hearted criticism of English colonialism by the Anglo-German collective Gob Squad (ore 11 – 19).
