production Fanny & Alexander and Festival delle Colline Torinesi
with the cooperation of Santarcangelo Festival 2008
and Scuola Holden
with the contribution of POGAS - Politiche Giovanili e Attività Sportive

concept Chiara Lagani and Luigi de Angelis
music Mirto Baliani
dramaturgy Chiara Lagani
costumes Chiara Lagani and Sofia Vannini with Marta Benini (tailoring) and Francesca Messori (dyeing)
direction, set, lighting design Luigi de Angelis

with Marco Cavalcoli, Chiara Lagani, Davide Sacco
scene movements Marco Cavalcoli, Marco Molduzzi, Davide Sacco

map of Oz’s world Beatrice Pasquali
Kansas Museum’s collection edited by Antonella Sbrilli
idiom of the compass Stefano Bartezzaghi

scenery and technical consultant Massimo Paci
scenery and technical realization Giovanni Cavalcoli, Nicola Fagnani (Opera Ovunque), Massimo Paci, with Marco Cavalcoli, Elisa Eusebi, Sara Masotti and Marco Molduzzi
catering Anna Ferrante Sacco, Anna Maria Bollettieri
promotion Valentina Ciampi, Marco Molduzzi
press office Marco Molduzzi
logistics Sergio Carioli
administration Marco Cavalcoli, Debora Pazienza

with thanks to Clio Agrapidis, Stella Bottai, Federico Califano, Giovanni Cavalcoli, Nevia Donati, Damiano Gaudenzi, Helena Komulainen, Marco and Matteo Leoni, Marita Liulia, Camilla Lopez, Roberto Magnani, Loretta Masotti, Sara Masotti, Anna Merenda Somma, Alessandro Minguzzi, Riccardo Spirandelli, Silvia Veroli, Marisa Volpi
with special thanks to Beatrice Pasquali

In the future you'll have a dream As if you were sleeping
When you open up your eyes You will see a familiar face

5 DOROTHIES, 5 POSSIBILITIES, 5 DECLENSIONS OF AN ONLY DESIRE. DOROTHY STORM IS A RATHER VISIONARY CLEANING WOMAN, DOROTHY GALE IS AN ELEGANT LADY VISITING A MUSEUM AND FALLING IN LOVE WITH A PORTRAIT, DOROTEA TEMPESTA IS AN USHERETTE REALIZING HER SECRET DREAM, DOROTHEA IS A PERFORMER OBSESSIVELY REPEATING A BROKEN STEP, DOT IS A SHORT-SIGHTED ART STUDENT IN DIFFICULTY, DOROTHY IS DOROTHY AND NOTHING ELSE.

Somewhere over the rainbow there’s a land that I dreamed of

KANSAS IS AN ART GALLERY OF SIGHTS TO LONG FOR, IT’S THE ENDLESS PRAIRE OF A TALE, OF THE COLOUR OF FADED DUST. IT’S A PREMISE, A RECESS, A RETURN, A DEPARTURE, A HINDRANCE, A CRACK, A FIT OF GIDDINESS, A SERIES OF ATTEMPTS OR METAMORPHOSES. IT’S A WOUNDED PLACE, A WORLD WITH A WILD AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE HEART. WHAT OTHER PLACE, WHAT JOURNEY IS THIS INITIAL ENDLESS POSSIBILITY THE PRELUDE TO? WHAT WILL REALLY HAPPEN TO THAT DOROTHY, AFTER GOING THROUGH THE STORM, OVER THE RAINBOW OF HER IRREPARABLE KANSAS?

Synopsis

An actress is obsessed by the figure of Dorothy from the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland. She wears a similar costume. The scene is sepia-toned like in the movie before the cyclone: it is an art gallery with some pictorial portraits. The portraits are copies of famous female portraits from the history of art, sepia-toned themselves too. Besides the portraits, two artworks by Maurizio Cattelan are exhibited, Him (the small Hitler) and Charlie don’t surf (a child sitting at a desk with his hands nailed to the desk by means of two pencils).
The scene is placed on some wheeled wagons coming from the background, dragged, in the beginning, by an actor-stage servant, a nightmarish animation of the statue by Cattelan Him, the puppeteer of the place, whose features can be perceived between a flashing light and another. The wheeled wagons move forward like in a zoom or focusing effect on 5 lines of tracks, like in a railway station. The actress looks at the portraits, 5 times for 5 possible ways to be reflected, 5 sequence shots. The figure is the very same one, the actress too, but the details, the objects, her make-up change, remaining faithfully sepia-toned. Her emotional reactions change and so do the sound contexts around her, the sounds she is wrapped by or that she herself produces. The relationship with the glances from the portraits causes wounds, blood dripping from her nose, from her pubes. The scene changes with each and every variation, the portraits get animated by a faster and faster rotatory movement, a real cyclone, until their outlines fade. The rhythm follows a wave-like crescendo, like in seismic phenomena, whose music is the drawing power according to an elastic movement, always from the inside to the outside and vice versa. Her own cyclone-earthquake is the opportunity for Dorothy to open to the outside world. Dorothy goes out of the artwork, she is herself at last, dressed in colors, passing through a thin rain hitting the whole scene, with a liberating effect. She goes out of KANSAS. The baton is passed on to the audience, now it's up to them to make the journey. The first meeting of the audience is with the Scarecrow: the animation of the statue by Cattelan, little Charlie, nailed to his desk. He doesn't turn his back to the audience anymore, and he shows off his litany of cardinal, geographical directions, in the empty of the scene, still wet. His caretaker/Cerberus: a small remote-controlled tank...

Tournée | Gallery | Essays on criticism

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