Portugal - “Little Asmodeus” by Teatro Gioco Vita theatre company
Little Asmodeus is a tale about the good and the evil from Lilla Asmodeus by Ulf Stark, one of the best-known contemporary writers of children books. With subtle irony but also through delicate poetry, with moments of healthy humor as well as sharp complexity, and always avoiding obvious pruderies, the author tells about another Mephistopheles who is in pursuit of his Faust.
Director Fabrizio Montecchi, who also wrote the theatrical adaptation together with Nicola Lusuardi, tells why he chose to set up this text.
«During all these years, what I understood about children -something that led me to choose with increasing conviction the texts to be performed-, is that they want to hear about important issues. Whether with frivolity, irony or humor, and by carefully choosing the ways and forms, the children want to hear us talking about serious things.
And they are mainly fascinated by the great questions of life, the kind of questions that humanity always struggled to answer -questions about life, death, love. What about the soul? That soul that wants to bargain our Asmodeus with insistency? What is it? Good question! A brain teaser for philosophers and thinkers of all times, but ask the children: the soul is what makes us live, what we have inside, is what is left alive when we die. The soul is us.
Simple answers? I don’t think so, and even if they were, yet they are answers. Because no matter how big question are, for the children they always have, or better, they must always have an answer. Just like stories, they must have an end.
Little Asmodeus is a story like that. It deals with important issues. That’s why it stimulates the children’s interest and their consideration: because it is sometimes funny, sometimes moving and it makes them think a lot».
The show is staged on 13th and 14th September. From 12th to 14th September, the Puppet Museum also proposes the workshop The shadow and its double by Fabrizio Montecchi.