Theatre of bumps, inebriated, calcinated

Abstract

Twenty years ago, when we first arrived at the Futa Cemetery, an incredible architectural site in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, we looked around us. We had no doubts. We immediately thought: Aeschylus. We said out loud: The Persians.... That’s how it all started. Then came the Oresteia. The Futa Pass has become our Theater of Mars, according to Karl Kraus’s extraterrestrial conception of theater: a place of memory, of pain, of defeat but also of pity and ambiguity: here is a burial ground for enemies, precisely more than 30,000 German soldiers. It’s a tragic graveyard where a silent chorus, from underground, constantly influences ethical, but also dramaturgical and philosophical choices, in an inexhaustible play of reflections on history, on taking a stance on what revolves around us, and  on our principle of responsibility.