Studio presentation by Era Theatre, as part of  “The World as a Place of Truth”: 2nd Season of the Masters, dir. Roberto Bacci

EVENT RESCHEDULED

Fri 23 October 2015, 21:00
Sat–Sun 24–25 October 2015, 19:00 

Na Grobli Studio

Admission free, advance booking required:

sekretariat@grotowski-institute.art.pl; tel. 71 34 45 320

In Italian with Polish subtitles

Pairs of blind people arrive in a place where they play a game whose winners regain eyesight. The game is presided over by a croupier, and its rules are laid down in a book called In the Light.

The first pair is a husband and wife. As the game progresses, it reveals a dramatic conflict between the couple. The second pair are two brothers, the older one dragging the younger behind him as a potential offering for regaining sight. The trials that the players go through may enable them to regain their sight, but for each of them the potential return to the world of light will spell a different fate.

Rivalry, infidelity, cruelty, contempt, violence, deception and fear of death are seven trials described in the book, the obstacles the players have to overcome to prove they can stay in control of their negative emotions.

Directed by Roberto Bacci

Performed by Sebastian Barbalan, Michele Cipriani, Silvia Pasello, Francesco Puleo, Tazio Torrini

Polish translation by Anna Górka

Running time 75 minutes

Roberto Bacci graduated from the University of Pisa in 1972 with a thesis entitled “Teatro e Alchimia” on My Father’s House, an Odin Teatret production directed by Eugenio Barba. In 1974 he founded Centro per la Sperimentazione e la Ricerca Teatrale in Pontedera (Centre for Theatrical Research and Experimentation), which in 1999 became Fondazione Pontedera Teatro. Since its inception he has been Artistic Director of the Centre, organising numerous projects in Italy and abroad, during which he came into contact with artists such as Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook, Anatoli Vasiliev, Raul Ruiz, Julian Beck and Judith Malina, Sanjukta Panigrahi and others.

He was Artistic Director of Festival Internazionale di Teatro di Santarcangelo di Romagna (for seven editions between 1978 and 1987), Volterra Teatro (1990–1999) and Passagio a Pontedera (renamed Generazioni in 2000). Since 2002 he has been Artistic Director of the theatre section of the festival Fabbrica Europa in Florence and, since 2012, of the festival Collinarea in Lari.

Since 1976 Roberto Bacci has directed many productions that toured in Italy, other European countries, Latin America and the Middle East, first with the Piccolo Teatro di Pontedera, and then with the Compagnia Laboratorio di Pontedera. Invited by the Grotowski Centre and the Warsaw Theatre Academy, Bacci brought to Poland An Ass’s Bray, based on The Idiot by Fiodor Dostoyevsky. Polish audiences also had the opportunity to see his Oblomov (after Goncarov), Waiting for Godot (after Beckett) and Hamlet: Silence from the Body (after Shakespeare). In 2008, Bacci founded Era Theatre in Pontedera, a new base of Fondazione Pontedera Teatro.

More information: www.centroperlaricercateatrale.it