"Pinocchio" by Babilonia Teatri and 'Gli Amici di Luca' Association on tour in Spain
It was 2012 when Pinocchio - The Land of Toys was born, a project by Babilonia Teatri –one of the most brilliant and revolutionary Italian companies of contemporary theatre– and the theatre company of ‘Gli Amici di Luca’ Association, that takes care of people with coma outcomes who have undertaken a therapeutic path also including theatrical activities.
The text, curate by Babilonia Teatri –alias Enrico Castellani and Valeria Raimondi, is inspired by Collodi’s work, core generator of a series of reflections on life, on its fragility and its strength, on will, on the choices made and the missed ones.
Pinocchio undergoes many metamorphoses, suffering for this. Even those who wake up from a coma find themselves profoundly changed: long times of rehabilitation, difficult to get back to their life of yesterday. The three performers ‘live’ Pinocchio, relive it, tell it through their personal experience, through the story, now ironic, now dramatic, of the accident, the coma, the after, and revealing some signs of that passage suspended between life and death.
In 2013 the show won the prestigious Prize of Theatre Critics at the Venice Biennale Teatro and over the years it has been staged several times both in Italy and abroad.
Now Pinocchio is on tour again: on November 12, 13, and 14 it will be performed in Madrid at the 39th Festival de Otoño and on November 15 and 16 in Valencia, where ‘Gli amici di Luca’ in co-operation with Nueva Opciòn - Asociación de Daño Cerebral Adquirido will also organize a workshop open to people with coma outcomes and citizens.
"The show Pinocchio and the encounter with Babilonia Teatri remained in our hearts as an exceptional and significant experience both from an artistic and a human point of view", explains Fulvio De Nigris, director of ‘Gli amici di Luca’ centre for research on coma. “For us, the use of theatre is very important both in the clinical phase and in the outcomes. The theatrical action can have a rehabilitative effect that increases our social integration project. It is an experience that was very useful and that once again, after many years, gives the actors of that time - Luigi Ferrarini, Paolo Facchini, and Riccardo Sielli - the opportunity to express themselves and witness their reintegration”.
The event is also linked to the 23rd Italian National Day of Awakenings for research on coma and the 5th European Day of Awakenings, that 'Gli Amici di Luca' makes together with the Spanish association, and to the awareness-rising and dissemination of good practice of art therapy for people with coma outcomes, also with a view to a mutual exchange of experiences between Spain and Italy.
The tour is supported by the Municipality of Bologna, ATER Fondazione, and the Italian Cultural Institute in Madrid.
Thanks to the support of the Italian Cultural Institute, partner of the Festival de Otoño, two further Italian performances will be offered during the festival, all by artists from Emilia-Romagna: fedeli d’Amore by Teatro delle Albe (November 17-18) and Bros by Romeo Castellucci (November 24-26).
Associazione 'Gli Amici di Luca'
