Rebecca speaks calmly. Even though we are in the dark, you have the feeling that she is looking you straight in the eyes. Rebecca smiles, chooses the right words. Rebecca has no fear: she tells her story with patience, care and grace. Sometimes Rebecca is poetry. Rebecca is an ugly woman. Truly ugly. She is not deformed, so she does not even inspire pity. All her parts are where they should be, only slightly further apart, or shorter, or longer, or larger than one would expect. The list makes no sense; it cannot convey it. And then she can smell things, every smell, all of them, like animals. A little girl, a woman later on, a story, an unspeakable family secret.
The performance is based on a dramaturgical adaptation of La vita accanto by Mariapia Veladiano (the author’s debut novel, winner of the 2010 Calvino Prize and a finalist for the 2011 Strega Prize). The protagonist of the performance is Rebecca’s story, narrated in the first person, suspended between a gripping mystery and a lucid, cutting poetry. In our staging, Rebecca’s voice belongs to a man. The story unfolds in darkness, that good darkness, as the protagonist herself calls it , which allows Rebecca to protect herself from judgment (just as it allows the audience to conceive of her ugliness) and to tell her story through a delicate, deliberate, necessary confession.
based on the novel La Vita Accanto by Mariapia Veladiano
adaptation and direction Marco Pasquinucci
with Marco Pasquinucci
voices Emanuele Niego, Caterina Simonelli, Ilaria Pardini, Cecilia Vecchio
first audience member Gianfranco Berardi
first audience member Gabriella Casolari
sound designer Mattia Loris Siboni
audio Alice Mollica
produced by Officine Papage