In the framework of

Holstebro Kommune - Odin Teatret - IKC, Interkulturelt Center

WIN

(WORKOUT FOR INTERCULTURAL NAVIGATORS - THEATRE AS SOCIAL INTERFERENCE) 2012 programme

10-30 December 2012

THE LAST BLOW

A 3 week workshop in the form of work in progress for the next production of the theatre group Divano Occidentale Orientale, led by Giuseppe L. Bonifati, Italy (director in residence at Odin Teatret).

The workshop will begin the process of making a performance based on the text "The Last Blow", by Giuseppe L. Bonifati. It is open to a limited number of participants, actors, performers, dancers and/or musicians, who are interested in collaborating with Divano Occidentale Orientale.

This first session of work has the purpose of a mutual acquaintance and of passing on a technical and poetical approach to a "theatre of necessity" which by choice is minimal, essential and crude. Divano Occidentale Orientale was born out of a will to create art through intense research and the workshop is conceived as an oasis for this research. At the end of the session, the aim is to integrate selected artists into the group so as to continue the production of the performance in 2013 with other residencies in Italy and abroad.

 

Following are some of the questions with which Giuseppe L. Bonifati would like to start the process and a short description of the plot.

 

In the exact instant you want to give up, you can go through a whole lifetime.

"There are days when I just want to leave or let him die".

There is too much to lose: a challenge to be solved with a clean cut slash.

Perhaps the day of the last goodbye has come?

The house on fire, the leather jacket, even the years of adolescence.

Then something or someone, unexpectedly, changes the course of events.

He, or she, appears on tiptoe, almost unnoticed, and

like an unexpected guest and map engineer, rewrites the boundaries of our self.

He opens our eyes, rubs them with briny wisdom. He offers his hands open as hope.

"Leave? Let him die? What should I do?"

Months ago I felt the echo of a woman coming from the East, like a ghost who visits an artist in a dream. She appeared with another strange character, that of a semi-mystical figure, "Hawthorn", a priest dressed in white to which everyone confesses why they want to see a poor man die. Two Siamese sisters of the dying person, a father and a mother, make up the Amish family. A little bird represents childhood, the grace of the past, while a mute man is not just mute. I imagine that a kiss of the Woman from the East, (a kiss if we are romantic), or a last sexual embrace, (to allow a crude moment of theatre), wakes the Dead Man or gives him the final blow. The final blow everyone longs for, invoked even by the sisters, who want their part of the inheritance, of the land, or simply because for too long he has occupied the only big bed in the house.

GIUSEPPE L. BONIFATI (1985) is an actor, playwright and theatre director based in Italy and Denmark. He studied at the Paolo Grassi Civic School of Dramatic Art in Milan, at the Silvio D'Amico National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome and at the Venice Biennale International Theatre Workshops. Since 2008, he is part of the international group Jasonites coordinated by Julia Varley (Odin Teatret). He is the artistic director of the theatre group Divano Occidentale Orientale, for which he wrote and directed Ammaliata, winner of the ETI (Italian Theatre Institute) prize for "Teatri del Sacro 2009"; and Cala 'a Saudage, finalist for the CRT - Teatro dell'Arte Kantor Prize Festival in 2010. Giuseppe L. Bonifati won the Alessandro Fersen National Prize of Dramaturgy in 2011 with the text Pepè El Bastardo Impaziente e Innamorato. In March 2012 he directed in San José (Costa Rica) his play Maiden in Costa Rica, co-produced by Ministry of Culture and Youth/Teatro Popular Melico Salazar/FIA 2012 for the International Festival of Arts. Currently he is working on the creation of a new short performance qui-es-tu?tu-me-tu(es) that had its last artistic residence at the Venice Theatre Biennale 2012. He was awarded with the Crystal Microphone "Umberto Benedetto, 2006, RAI, New voices for radio, and was chosen in 2011 among the Young National Talents by Italian Ministry of Youth.

 

http://www.divanoccidentaleorientale.com
http://www.vimeo.com/occidentaleorientale

 

 

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