Switzerland - "The Comedy of Vanity" by ERT
One of the less known but more modern works by Nobel Prize writer Elias Canetti is revised by Claudio Longhi in a piece co-produced by LAC Lugano. A very ambitious work, in which almost 30 actors are engaged on the stage.
Written between 1933 and 1934 but published just in 1950 and first staged in 1965, The Comedy of Vanity describes a dystopian world, in which an authoritarian government decides to deprive people of their identity. And it does it by eliminating mirrors and sentencing to death the producers. What is destroyed is the very idea of identity.
«In the senseless chattering of present days (…), it could be instructive to come back to Canetti’s whimsical dreams, without any desire to actualize their contents but only to practice, as skilled historical materialists, to decipher for the stage their hieroglyphics and ideograms (are they produced by the sleep or by the death of reason?), so refining our critical thinking.» (from the director’s notes)