PLAY-BACK 2021
Teatro contemporaneo italiano / Contemporary Italian Theatre
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Melbourne / Italian Cultural Institute Melbourne
Cura di / Curated by Elvira Frosini e Daniele Timpano
SOCRATE IL SOPRAVVISSUTO / come le foglie
from the novel Il Sopravvissuto by Antonio Scurati with graftings inspired by Plato and Cees Nooteboom
with Marco Menegoni, Iohanna Benvegna, Marco Ciccullo, Matteo D’Amore, Piero Ramella, Francesca
Scapinello, Massimo Simonetto, Mariagioia Ubaldi, Margherita Sartor
Masks Silvia Bragagnolo e Simone Derai
Costumes Serena Bussolaro e Simone Derai
Music and sound design Mauro Martinuz
Video Simone Derai and Giulio Favotto
with Domenico Santonicola (Socrate), Piero Ramella (Alcibiade), Francesco Berton, Marco Ciccullo, Saikou Fofana, Giovanni Genovese, Elvis Ljede, Jacopo Molinari, Piermaria Muraro, Massimo Simonetto
Drone sequences Tommy Ilai e Camilla Marcon
Concept and editing Simone Derai e Giulio Favotto
Cinematography and post production Giulio Favotto / Otium
Direction Simone Derai
Drammaturgy Simone Derai e Patrizia Vercesi
Production Anagoor 2016
Co-production Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Centrale Fies
Rete Critica 2016 Award – best show of the year
ANCT 2016 – Italian National Theater Critics Award
Nomination for best show of the at UBU Award 2016
Anagoor enters a classroom, in a high school like many others, following the most crucial pages of the novel Il Sopravvissuto by Antonio Scurati, and assuming the point of view of a teacher standing in front of a group of kids and in charge of their education. Between the moments preceding the death of Socrates as ordered by the City, and the hour in which the student Vitaliano Caccia shoots to death a whole examination committee only sparing the life of his history and philosophy teacher (as it is fiercely painted in Scurati’s novel) a battle is engaged – an authentic battle of the giants within western thought from its origins to its inevitable and tragic historical outcomes. Two eternal query are renewed: the search for meaning, bulky question mark turned towards the teacher, and the question around the position occupied by the educator itself in relation to knowledge and the disciples.
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Anagoor, which in just a few years has moved to the centre of attention of Italian and European theatre, has been attributed the Silver Lion for Theatre 2018. The company has worked in depth for its research into a new language, borrowing from images and symbols that lead back to our cultural memory. “The work of Anagoor, never wanting in a powerful aesthetic, is successful in bringing important themes to a wide audience; Anagoor is never popular in its choice of texts, yet it is, and nobly, in its artistic rendition. What makes its work sometimes conceptual but also profoundly artisanal is the fact that they do not delegate artistic decisions to anyone, that as a collective they are able to do everything by themselves, from writing the scripts to building the sets and making the costumes which are always visually stunning, to the point that their productions are in demand in many Italian and foreign theatres” (from the motivation).
The Anagoor company was founded by Simone Derai and Paola Dallan in Castelfranco Veneto in 2000, established from the very beginning as an experiment in collective work. Today, directors Simone Derai and Marco Menegoni work regularly with Patrizia Vercesi, Mauro Martinuz and Giulio Favotto, while other artists and professionals join them continually, enriching their growth and underscoring their nature as a collective. An ongoing workshop, open to professionals and amateurs, Anagoor is the hub of a creative process open to the city and its diverse generations where, in a strenuous attempt to generate a theatrical art of the polis, there is an ideal continuity between educational activities in schools, work within the territory, the call for community involvement, the company’s productions. Anagoor’s theatre responds to an iconic aesthetic that precipitates into various final formats in which the performing arts, philosophy, literature and hyper-media theatre engage in a dialogue, demanding however, strongly and by virtue of the nature of this art, to remain theatre.
Their productions include: *jeug- (2008); Tempesta (2009), winner of a special mention at the Premio Scenario; Fortuny (2011); L.I. Lingua Imperii (2012), one of the winning productions at Music Theatre NOW 2015; Virgilio Brucia (2014); Socrate il sopravvissuto / come le foglie (2016) nominated for the Premio Ubu as Production of the year, Orestea / Agamennone Schiavi Conversio (2018) selected by Fondation d’entreprise Hermès within the framework of the New Settings Program. In 2012 the company approached musical theatre in the film-concert Et manchi pietà, followed by the direction of three operas: in 2013 Il Palazzo di Atlante by Luigi Rossi (1642), presented at the Sagra Musicale Malatestiana in Rimini, in 2017 Faust by Charles Gounod, a production of the Teatro Comunale di Modena, Teatro Valli di Reggio Emilia and Teatro Municipale di Piacenza and in 2019 Das Paradies und die Peri by Robert Schumann, a production of the Palermo Teatro Massimo.
Anagoor has won many awards, including the “Jurislav Korenić “ prize to Simone Derai as Best young director at the 53rd Festival MESS (2012), the Premio Hystrio – Castel dei Mondi (2013), the Premio ANCT for innovative experimentation in theatre, the HYSTRIO prize for direction (2016) and the Premio ReteCritica.
Since 2008 Anagoor has based its headquarters in the countryside around Treviso, at La Conigliera, a rabbit farm converted into an atelier and since 2010 it is part of the Fies Factory project at Centrale Fies – art work space.