Théâtre : Pupo di Zucchero - La Festa dei morti

With her troupe of ten actors, accompanied by ten original sculptures by Cesare Inzerillo, Emma Dante, playwright and director, invents a baroque and dazzling celebration, between laughter and melancholy. Drawing on the traditional rituals of her native Sicily, she weaves this tenuous link between life and death, that of memory that survives and is transmitted through a tale with a universal dimension.

An old man, alone in a house full of memories, performs a ritual that awakens the dead of his family, the joys and sorrows of their lives. Pupo di zuccero is a sugar statuette, made every year, as is customary in southern Italy, on the eve of November 2. Standing on a table of food, it connects the dead to the living, responsible for maintaining their memory and giving meaning to their existence. The story that Emma Dante tells us is universal: it is about talking about love as well as mourning, in its striking way. The artist felt the need to transform through theatre the pain of absence into a celebration of life. As often with her, the artistic language takes on a magical dimension with a succession of striking paintings that culminate when the disappeared, sculpted by her compatriot Cesare Inzerillo, reappear, carried in the arms of the living. A jewel of raw poetry carried a powerful and exceptional troupe, capable of combining commedia del arte, puppet, music and dance in a vibrant momentum.