France – Teatro delle Ariette at the Festival de l’Arpenteur
In a dystopian future which is alarmingly similar to our present, a 70 years-old woman who went through the Age of the Great Contagions and the long period of Faunal-Health Reorganization – during which all the animals deemed guilty of being carriers of diseases had been eliminated –, has to confront the reality of a new world –modern, cruel, hardened, dark, and merciless.
This is Teatro delle Ariette’s latest work And the animals reappeared, that will be presented on July 8 and 9 in Les Adrets within the “Festival de l'Arpenteur”, festival organized by Scènes obliques Association which annually hosts live performance and contemporary literature events on the slopes of the Belledonne massif (Isère).
The performance is from a text by contemporary French writer Catherine Zambon, who wrote it in 2020 during the first lockdown.
Paola Berselli and Stefano Pasquini fell in love with it, because “her text did not speak of France or Italy, of the animal cause or of climate change, not only at least, but it spoke above all of us, of our anxieties, of our desires, of the present that we all are living. (…) We were amazed by the text, besides the dystopian science fiction contents, because of the protagonist’s humanity, her compassions for all the forms of life”.
A 'string' that has always vibrated also in Paola's and Stefano's artistic and daily work in the fields of the Ariette farm, where life and theatre coincide.
After the pandemic, And the animals reappeared is an invitation to a reflection for a return to 'normality' that implies greater participation, a personal consciousness, as well as civil and collective ones, and the awareness that men are only a part of the Earth, and not even the most important.