Japan – “Marat-Sade” by ERT and Arte e Salute
Since 1999 the director Nanni Garella has been working with psychiatric patients of Arte e Salute Association trying to combine, but especially to compare, the artistic work of theatre with the field of mental health. After a long course of training and play, the actors of Arte e Salute have received many awards -including one Premio Ubu, one Premio Hystrio, a Critics Award-, and have confronted themselves with authors like Pirandello, Pinter, Brecht, Pasolini, Scarpetta.
Now the actors confront themselves with a classic of the avant-garde theatre of the 20th century by Peter Weiss. The Marquis de Sade, who was imprisoned in the asylum of Charenton, staged a play about Marat’s murder giving the patients the role of the characters.
The elaboration of the text is the result of a long workshop on the text and on the drama, as usual for the company. On stage, besides the actors of Arte e Salute, director Nanni Garella himself.
The persecution and assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as performed by the inmates of the asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade -currently shortened to Marat-Sade- is without doubt one of the most interesting and new dramas of the entire post-war period.
After many interpretations – including the historic one by Peter Brook in 1967 – Marat-Sade arrives to interpreters we could call “natural” -the group of psychiatric patients of Arte e salute, who are able to represent what were the conditions of inmates in mental hospitals. It is a further opportunity to show the public, through the art, their liberation from the constraints of the disease and their yearning for freedom.
The performance is staged on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the enacting in Italy of the so called “Basaglia law” and is presented in Hamamatsu (on October 10th) and in Tokyo (on October 16th).
The event is organized by Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo, Servizio Sanitario Regionale Emilia-Romagna, Azienda Unità Sanitaria Locale di Bologna, Tokyo Soteria Onlus, under the patronage of The National Federation of Mental Health and Welfare Party in Japan, Community Mental Health & Welfare Bonding Organization, Associazione Nazionale per il sostegno al paziente psichiatrico Onlus, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Itabashi City Office.
In Tokyo, the show is introduced by the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Paolo Calvetti and by the Major of the City of Bologna, Virginio Merola.
A meeting with the public will follow the show.
ERT - Emilia Romagna Teatro
Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo