Modena, 27th May 2018

“Moby Dick” national première
6th June, Piazza Roma in Modena
Teatro dei Venti street performance

The tale of a man’s challenge with the unknown in a play that puts
Ahab’s ship and an invasion by 100 seamen on stage
at 9 pm as part of Modena Summer 2018

MODENA – “Moby Dick”, a new show by the Teatro dei Venti theatre company, freely inspired by the namesake novel by Herman Melville is to be put on stage in its national première in Piazza Roma, Modena, on Wednesday 6th June at 9 pm.
This performance-event is devised for urban settings, staging Captain Ahab’s ship and his obsession to find the White Whale, together with his crew and his yearning for social recognition. A huge theatrical machine and a company of 25 artists, including actors, musicians, acrobats and technicians, supplemented by participating members of the local community, with a group of citizens, children and the elderly, inmates from Modena and Castelfranco Emilia Jail and asylum-seekers. Teatro dei Venti continues in its artistic research in urban settings with a street performance that connects with the community and with the themes of a classic in world literature. The epic and nautical setting for Melville’s novel meets with the archaic sound of traditional barrels from Campania, in a work comprising philosophical reflections about the unknown, the contamination between languages from the East and West, and the use of huge theatrical machines.
Moby Dick is, as writer Cesare Pavese wrote in the introduction to the novel with his translation, “the allegory of the spasmodic pursuit, of a thirst for knowledge and for revenge, of the relationship between good and evil, of the ferociousness and of the devastating force of nature and of man”.

Concept and direction Stefano Tè;
literary adaptation for the stage play Giulio Sonno;
direction consultancy Mario Barzaghi;
direction assistance Simone Bevilacqua;
musical direction Luca Cacciatore, Igino L. Caselgrandi and Domenico Pizzulo;
costumes by Teatro dei Venti, Luca Degl’Antoni and Beatrice Pizzardo;
lighting design Alessandro Pasqualini;
sound Nicola Berselli e Andrea Generali;
stage technician and stage machinery Dino Serra and Massimo Zanelli;
stage designs Dino Serra in collaboration with Teatro dei Venti.

With Alessio Boni, Oksana Casolari, Marco Cupellari, Daniele De Blasis, Alfonso Domínguez Escribano, Federico Faggioni, Talita Ferri, Francesca Figini, Davide Filippi, Hannes Langanky, Alberto Martinez, Amalia Ruocco, Antonio Santangelo, Felix Pacome Tehe Bly, Mersia Valente, Elisa Vignolo.

A production by Teatro dei Venti, in co-production with Klaipėda Sea Festival (Lithuania), produced with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Municipality of Modena, the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, with the contribution of the Municipality of Dolo (VE) in partnership with the Associazione Echidna.

Drama notes
Moby Dick is an illusion. Everyone thinks they know what it is and yet no-one does. There is talk. Is it a whale? A sperm whale? A white monster? Very few people have in fact read the novel to the very end: almost everyone has given up after a while. Indeed, the nature of the book is quite different from what is portrayed in films, illustrations and anthologies. Page after page, the events go off the rails, Captain Ahab’s fury overflows with feelings of revenge, his impossible hunt takes on a metaphysical meaning, and the reader – confused – gets lost: something is not quite right. What is it? The destination of this undertaking.
Why does a group of men decide to set off on a journey? While Melville was drawing inspiration from his own direct experience on a whale ship, from seafaring tales and Western literature, he was also nurturing that nascent American spirit that dreamt of democracy. Can a new model of society be built or are the masses condemned to being oppressed? Moby Dick thus becomes the “genius in a crowd”, the impossible synthesis, Hobbes’ ruthless Leviathan devouring Emerson’s transcendentalism.
Yet however much a civilisation is destined to disappear amid the cogs of history, a propensity to travel always survives, a thin group of men will always decide to venture into uncertain waters to discover if another way of life is possible. Thus the hunt for Moby Dick becomes the pursuit of an illusion.
The literary adaptation of the novel attempts to retrieve some of the voices that animated Melville’s novel to provide the feeling of initiation to the journey made by the people on board the Pequod. A stage-float that is an ark, port and unforgotten wreck that goes beyond time. The famous incipit below is an invitation to the theatre: call me Ishmael, as if to say, let’s pretend I am Ishmael and I will tell you all a story, let’s pretend a dream of humanity is brought back to life, let’s pretend this illusion becomes reality tomorrow.

Free entry
Information and updates on the website: mobydick.theater and www.teatrodeiventi.it
389 7993351 – 059 7114312
info@teatrodeiventi.it
Follow and share “Moby Dick” on social networks through the hashtags #MobyDick and #FollowTheWhale

About the company
The Teatro dei Venti company was set up in 2005 in Modena. Its activities are spread over four different areas, which are correlated: the production of theatrical performances, social-cultural projects, as well as training and organising festivals and events. Its artistic research work has concentrated particularly on Theatre in urban settings, through the use of stilts and high-impact mobile sceneries. It has toured Italy and abroad with its performances “Il Draaago” , “Simurgh” and “Pentesilea”, in France, Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Spain, Romania, Taiwan, and India.
A member of the Coordinamento Teatro Carcere Emilia-Romagna (Emilia-Romagna Prison Theatre Coordination), it holds permanent workshops by the correctional facilities of Castelfranco Emilia and Modena. Again as part of its social activities, it promotes projects for International Co-operation (Mozambique, Serbia, Senegal) and for Mental Health in partnership with the Mental Health Department of the Modena Ausl (local health authority). It has organised Trasparenze > Festival e Residenze Teatrali (Transparencies > Festivals and Theatrical Residences) for the promotion of the contemporary theatrical scene since 2012. From 2015 to 2017 it pursued the “Urban Theatre Experience” project with the support of “Funder 35” – a fund for youth cultural undertakings. It is part of Project FAIDRA since 2016, supported by Creative Europe with partners from several European countries. It has held a workshop since 2017 with a group of asylum-seekers from project “Mare Nostrum” with the support of Caleidos Cooperativa Sociale, with which it won the MigrArti tender in 2018.
“Moby Dick” is the latest project in the company’s time line, summing up the work developed by the company from the onset: the utopia of theatre in urban settings and in contact with communities.

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