text, set-design, direction Jan Fabre

choreography Jan Fabre, Ivana Jozic

performer Ivana Jozic

production Troubleyn/Jan Fabre

coproduction Festival d’Avignon, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Napoli Teatro Festival Italia

collaboration with Aldo Miguel Grompone, Zagreb Youth Theatre & Theatre Festival (Croazia)

from 26th to 28th June

20.00

Teatro Nuovo

First Night

duration 90′

dramaturgy and assistant to Jan Fabre Miet Martens

soundscape Tom Tiest, DomXh

recordings at Ghost Town (Hemiksem,B) by Geert Vanbever

musicians Tom Tiest (guitar) Filip Vandebril ((double) bass),

deemonkeyjazz (drum), Andrew Claes (tenor sax), Vincent Brijs (baritone sax), Charlotte Saelemakers (violin), Jennifer De Keersmaeker (violin), Astrid Bossuyt (violin)

song ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ by Gentry, Bobbie (C/A) Northridge Music Co / Universal- MCA Music Holland BV

costume design Louise Assomo

singing-coach Dirk Bohnen

language coach French Anny Czupper

language coach English Tom Hannes

technical coordination Harry Cole

light design Jan Fabre / Harry Cole

technicians for creation set Bern Van Deun, Sven Van Kuijk, Geert Van der Auwera, Alexis Devos, Mikes Poppe

production/tour management Sophie Vanden Broeck

Another Sleepy Dusty Delta Day is Jan Fabre’s new work that, after Naples, will make its debùt at the Festival d’Avignon. The title of the performance, as well as its creation, draw their inspiration from the famous Ode to Billy Joe (1967) by the American singer of Portoguese origin Roberta Lee Streeter (Bobbie Gentry) on the stage. Considered as one of the first country song writers and singers, Bobbie Gentry, who was a fascinating and good-looking woman with a hoarse and sensuous voice, composed innovative and original songs on the life styles and cultural values of the southern States of America. The “Delta” of the title refers to the mouth of the Mississipi river. «It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty, Delta day I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was balin’ hay And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat And Mama hollered out the back door “y’all remember to wipe your feet” And then she said “I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge: Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge”». The song is about the mysterious story of Billy Joe’s suicide, a topic that has been used as outline for the “solo” created by Fabre for Ivana Jozic, the Croatian dancer who has already worked in many other performances of the Belgian artist.

Visual artist, performer, sculptor theatrical director, choreographer, writer, Jan Fabre was born in Antwerp in 1958. He studied at the Institute for Decorative Arts and then Fine Arts at the Royal Academy. Still very young, he directed his first performance (Theatter geschreven met een K is een kater, ad Anversa), followed, in 1982, by This is theatre like it was to be expected and foreseen: a performance lasting eight hours, from sunset to dawn, that deeply impressed the audience and gave him an immediate fame. Two years later Fabre was already at the Biennale di Venezia with The power of theatrical madness, that defined his style even more clearly. In the past years Fabre has created Je suis sang (2001, performed again in 2003 and 2005): it is a diptych dedicated to the body humours that constitute our substance, it is a hymn to blood and body. The crying body dates back to 2004; it is a preliminary study for The History of Tears: the performance is focused on what Fabre calls «body tears», all secretions produced by the human body when it is sad or happy, when it wants or is afraid of something (Je suis Sang, Ange de la Mort, Quando l’uomo principale…). In 2007, Jan Fabre was asked by the Festival of Salzburg, held at the Felsenreithschule, to create the Réquiem für eine Metamorphose. Together with Chantal Akerman and Wolfgang Rihm, he recently performed I am a Mistake.

L’OPERA DI PERIFERIA

by Peppe Lanzetta

directed by Pasquale De Cristofaro

production Associazione Teatro Studio

21st, 22nd June

21.30

Teatro della Villa Comunale

language Italian

duration 120′
L’opera di periferia is an original musical comedy that marks Peppe Lanzetta’s debùt as writer of comedies.

The performance draws its inspiration from Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera or from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera; it is about “marginalised” teen-agers who dream of America but, likely enough, will die on a road in the outskirts of Naples named American Road. They are the children of the Neapolitan suburban districts, symbols of any peripheral city area, but above all, of social marginalisation. It is a difficult reality made up of rebellion and naivety, or epic deeds, the complexity of which is conveyed through a wide range of languages suspended between tragedy and “sceneggiata”, in a narration including prose, songs and dance, something in-between musical comedy and musical.

The performance is played by professional actors and a group of teen-agers from the urban suburbs to raise the awareness of the public opinion of the problems and hopes of these areas. The project is also aimed at creating social integration, opportunities for cultural emancipation and, lastly, job opportunities. The work deals with the problems linked to the marginalisation of the post-modern lumpenproletariat and of the gangs of teen-agers from the “malanapoli”; it also deals with the pervasive interference of camorra in an increasing number of districts in Naples.

Born in Naples in 1956, Peppe Lanzetta worked with Edoardo Bennato, Pino Daniele, James Senese and Franco Battiato writing down the texts of their songs. He made his theatrical debùt with Napoletano pentito (1983), followed by Roipnol (1984), Il vangelo secondo Lanzetta (1986), Lenny (1988), Caro Achille ti scrivo (1990), Il peggio di Lanzetta (1993), Tropico di Napoli (1998), Ridateci i sogni (2001). Actor and author of cinema projects, he also worked with directors such as Piscicelli, Tornatore, Cavani, De Crescenzo, Loy, Martone, Asia Argento, Scimeca. He published: Un amore a termine (1998) and In gita a Napoli (1997). He co-operated as author of texts with a

number of musicians including Edoardo Bennato, Tullio de Piscopo, James Senese, Enzo Avitabile, Joe Amoruso, Rino Zurzolo, Franco Ricciardi, Massimo Severino and Franco Battiato.

The Theatre Festival of Naples, which is celebrating its first edition this year, will feature two performances of the “Trickster of Seville or The Stone Guest” by Tirso de Molina, with Spanish actor Fran Perea in the role of Don Juan.

The version of this Golden Age classic, which will be set in Naples on 21 and 22 June, is a production from the Spanish classical theatre festival in Almagro.

Following the presentation of the Almagro Festival in the Cervantes Institute in Naples, its director, Emilio Hernández, pointed out that the figure of Don Juan represents a link between Naples in Italy (where Tirso de Molina’s work starts, at the time of the Spanish occupation of southern Italy) and Spain.

As a symbol of the “collaborative spirit” promoted by the Naples and Almagro Festivals, the latter will host an Italian play entitled “Five stories for Casanova” on 1 and 5 July, about the famous Venetian seducer written from the point of view of the women that he loved.

TEMPLE
di Natalie Hennedige
regia Natalie Hennedige
coproduzione NTFI e Singapore Arts Festival (Singapore)
Prima Europea
lingua: inglese (sopratitoli in italiano)
durata: 80’
dal 27 al 29 giugno
22.00
location: Real Albergo dei Poveri

He has written, among much other work, a requiem in memory of the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini, a cantata for the 17th-century Neapolitan revolutionary, Masaniello, and, in 1999, a remarkable oratorio, “Eleonora,” in honor of the republican heroine of the Neapolitan revolution of 1799. He is currently reworking his stage version of The Cat Cinderella, based on the oldest version of that fairy-tale, a dialect tale by Giambattista Basile from the early 1600s. As with many of his other works, he will take the show on the road in a version that employs a modified Neapolitan dialect in order to make the work accessible to a wider audience.

LO VOMMARO A DUELLO
by Roberto De Simone

directed by Roberto De Simone

production Napoli Teatro Festival Italia

in cooproduction with Fondazione Teatro San Carlo di Napoli

27th, 28th June

21.00

Mercadante – Teatro Stabile di Napoli

First night

language Italian

duration 165

Roberto De Simone’s new performance is the result of the fusion of Pasquale Starace’s play Lo Vommaro (1742), and Il duello comico, Giovanni Paisiello’s farce in music (1774).

The performance develops along two parallel tracks, including scenes played by actors and music fragments of comic opera, so as to alternate, intersect and merge the two different companies of opera singers and theatre actors. Without following a real plot Lo Vommaro a duello is actually theatre: the exhibition of materials stops just at the conclusion, without a rational or real end. As explained by Roberto De Simone, in the play «the farce in music interrupts to leave space to the play, but suddenly the latter stops as well and music starts again…».

The performance is a «contemporary work on the theatrical languages of the Neapolitan 18th hundred century»; a real Neapolitan language in constant equilibrium between baroque literary style and vernacular style, that is constantly used as a phonetic or rhythmical material to be enjoyed by everybody. This language, and its extraordinary hyperbolic wealth combines with a similarly rich music language, in which Paisiello achieves outstanding results in devising models, typical of melody, with unique rhythmic components.

Born in Naples in 1933, he studied piano and composition with Tita Parisi and Renato Parodi. Composer, musicologist, playwright, director and ethnomusicologist; he is Art Director of the Teatro San Carlo of Naples and Director, for established reputation, of the Conservatory of Naples (1996-2000). He published the following works (published by Einaudi): La Gatta Cenerentola (1997), Fiabe campane (1994), Il presepe popolare napoletano (1998), Il Convitato di Pietra (1998), L’opera buffa del giovedì santo (1999), La Cantata dei pastori (2000), Il Cunto de li cunti (2001). De Simone also directed many operas in the most important theatres of the world, including Le Zite ‘ngalera by Leonardo Vinci, La Serva Padrona, Stabat Mater and Il Flaminio by Giuseppe Pergolesi; Osteria di Marechiaro by Paisiello; Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Rossini; Nabucco by Verdi and Così fan tutte by W. A. Mozart (conductor: Riccardo Muti); Lauda intorno allo Stabat and Requiem in memoria di P.P. Pasolini by De Simone.

“Being a poet means that I have already written but that I have actually written nothing. Poetry is an act without a beginning or an end. It is really a promise of a beginning, a perpetual beginning.” (from ‘Preface’, 1992)

Adonis was born ‘Ali Ahmad Sa’id in Al Qassabin, near the city of Latakia, in Syria. His father was a farmer and imam; he died in 1952. The village teacher taught Adonis to read and write, but he did not attend school, or saw a car or listen to a radio until he turned twelve. From his father, an influential figure in his life, he received a traditional Islamic education. In 1944 Adonis entered the French Lycée at Tartus, graduating in 1950. In the same year Adonis published his first collection of verse, Dalila. Adonis studied law and philosophy at the Syrian University in Damascus, and served two years in the army. Harassed for his political views, Adonis spent part of his service in jail. After leaving his native country in 1956, Adonis settled with his wife, the literary critic Khalida Sa’id, in Lebanon, becoming a Lebanese citizen. With his friend, Yusuf Al-Khal (1917-1987), he founded the poetry magazine Shi’ir, which introduced modernistic ideas into Arabic poetry. Its first issue was banned in several Arab countries. When rumors started to spread, that Shi’r was infiltrated by Syrian nationalist elements, it was temporarily suspended. The group around the magazine dissolved. Adonis broke his ties with Al-Khal, who started the review with another editorial board.

Aghani Mihyar al-Dimashqi (1961) was Adonis’ first major work, in which references to the past become a vehicle for revolutionary notions. In 1964 Adonis edited an important anthology of Arabic poetry, Diwan ash-shiar al-arabi. With a vanguard of Arab writers, he started in 1968 to publish Mawakif, a journal which championed like Shi’ir the renovation of Arabic literary conventions, but in a more radical way.

Adonis adopted his pseudonym early in his career, crystallizing in the name the idea of spiritual renewal. Adonis is in Greek mythology a handsome young man, Aphrodite’s lover; his story also includes the theme of resurrection. In ‘Resurrection and Ashes’ Adonis wrote: “O Phoenix, when fire is born in your beloved wing / What pen do you hold? / How do you replace your lost down? / Do you erase the dry error in its book? When ashes embrace you, what world do you feel?” The first collection of Adonis’ verse in English, The Blood of Adonis, appeared in 1971. The edition was reissued with three new poems under the title Transformations of the Lover (1982). A Muslim intellectual and a world writer, Adonis has build bridges between Western influences and Arabic, Greek and biblical tradition. “The west is another name for the east,” he once wrote. Western materialism, which he rejects, is his target in ‘A Grave for New York’. The poem was based on his visit in the city. Adonis addresses Walt Whitman, who becomes his guide as Virgil was Dante’s guide through Hell: “I see letters to you flying in the air above the streets of Manhattan. Each letter is a carriage full of cats and dogs. The age of cats and dogs is the twenty-first century, and human beings will suffer extermination: This is the American Age.” Decades later, in 1998 Adonis confessed, that he finds himself “closer to Nietzsche and Heidegger, to Rimbaud and Baudelaire, to Goethe and Rilke, than to many Arab writers, poets and intellectuals.”

In 1970 Adonis was appointed professor of Arabic literature at the Lebanese University. Three years later Adonis earned a doctoral degree from the St Joseph University in Beirut. The subject of his thesis was “Permanence and Change in Arabic Thought and Literature.” In 1975 the civil war in Lebanon broke out and in the 1980s the war escalated - the Israeli army moved on to Beirut, and the Syrians become entrenched. During this period, Adonis stayed mostly in Beirut. In 1980-81 he was a visiting lecturer at the university Censier Paris III. Adonis has also taught at, the Collège de France, Georgetown University, and the University of Geneva. After leaving the Lebanese University, Adonis moved in 1986 to Paris. In 2001, Adonis was awarded the Goethe Medal of the Goethe-Gesellschaft. His name has often been mentioned among the Nobel Prize candidates.

Although Adonis has critically examined problems of the Middle East, as a poet he has been more interested in experimentation, language, and freeing poetry from the traditional formalism, than to comment contemporary socio-political issues. The Arab poet according to Adonis has two sides, the I and the Other, the Western persona. In ‘A Desire Moving Through the Maps of the Material’ (1986-87) he wrote: “thus I no longer hesitate to say: / “the I and the other / are me,” and time is but a basket / to collect poetry”. Exile is not only the basic definition of the being of the Arab poet; the language itself is born in exile. The poet lives between two exiles, the internal one and the external one. And there are “many other forms of exile as well: censorship, interdiction, expulsion, imprisonment and murder.” Adonis’ views of the stagnation of the Arab culture and literature have aroused much controversy. His poems, which often have a deep mystical sense of history, has been characterized by his critics as abstract. Adonis has answered: “nothing clarifies me like this obscurity / Or perhaps it was: nothing obscures me like this clarity)”. After the bombardment of Kana during the war in Lebanon in 2006, Adonis said in a interview that “Israel only sees the Arab world with eyes of glowing, angry metal, the metal of tanks, bullets or bombers.”

For further reading: Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 1, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology, ed. by Salma Khadra Jayyusi (1987); World Authors 1975-1980, ed. by Vineta Colby (1985); Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry by M.A. Badawi (1975)

Selected works:

• Dalila, 1950
• Qalat alard, 1952
• Qasaid ula, 1957
• Idha qulta ya Suriyya, 1958
• Awraq fi al-rih, 1958
• Aghani Mihyar al-Dimashqi, 1961
• ed.: Diwan al-shi’r al-’arabi, 1964-68
• Waqt bayn al-ramad wa al-ward, 1970
• Qabr min ajl New York, 1971
• Muqaddimah li-al-sh’r al-’Arabi, 1971
• The Blood of Adonis, 1971 (trans. by S. Hazo)
• Zaman al Shi’r, 1972
• Al-Thabit wa ‘l-mutahawwil, 1974
• Mufrad fi sighat al-jam, 1975
• Mirrors, 1976
• Fatihah li-nihayat al-qarn, 1980
• Kitab al-qasa’id al-khams, 1980
• Transformations of the Lover, 1983
• Victims of a Map, 1984 (trans. by A. al-Udhari)
• Shahwah tataqaddam di khara’it al-maddah, 1987
• Ihtifa’ bi-al-ashya’ al-wadihah al-ghamidah, 1988
• Kalam al-bayidat, 1989
• Siyasat al-shir, 1992
• Al-Nizam wa-al-kalam, 1993
• Ha anta, ayyuha alwaqt, 1993
• Abjadiyyah thaniyyah, 1994
• If Only the Sea Could Sleep (trans. by Susan Einbinder); The Pages of Day and Night, 1994 (trans. by Samuel Hazo)
• Amitié, temps et lumière, 2002 (with Dimitri T. Analis)
• A Time Between Ashes And Roses, 2005 (trans. by Shawkat M. Toorawa)

ALBERI ADAGIATI SULLA LUCE
by Adonis
translation Francesca Corrao
presentazione del testo: 26 giugno

DEATH IS CERTAIN
(36 modi per torturare una ciliegia)

performance by Eva Meyer-Keller

production Eva Meyer-Keller

from 26th to 28th June

21.10

duration 40′
location: Real Albergo dei Poveri

with friendly support by Vooruit Gent, Stuk Leuven

thanks to Alexandra Bachzetsis, Juan Dominguez, Mette Edwardsen, Cuqui Jerez, Martin Nachbar, Rico Repotente

assistance Napoli Martina Schumacher

The performance could also be entitled 36 ways to torture a cherry, as cherries, together with a wide range of daily objects, are the main characters of this performance.

Drawing inspiration from the fairy tales in which objects animate and enable us to project our experiences and fantasies, Eva Meyer-Keller lets spectators live two performances: the “small” performance, occurring under everybody’s very eyes, and the “tragic” performance, fruit of imagination. Committing a systematic murder of cherries, the German artist turns a simple daily action into an atrocity. Drawing from a shared cultural heritage, the performance ranges over cinematographic and literary images of the death, including actual executions.

Death is certain is the result of the wish to show something that can be easily accessed to: through the construction of minimal situations, the artist leaves to the spectator’s imagination the task to complete and interpret the performance.

Undoubtedly in Death is Certain Eva Meyer-Keller uses cherries to talk about something else; what is interesting about this work is the evocation of something that is somewhere else. In front of such a performance, it is no use wondering whether it is an installation, a visual art, or a celebration of the daily life. Surely enough it generates conflicting emotions; that’s what matters.

Eva Meyer-Keller (1972) is a German performer who has performed her works in Europe and America, in theatres and art galleries. After studying photography and visual arts in Berlin and London, she graduated at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam. She is a versatile artist who often works on more than one project simultaneously, sets up performances, organises festivals and events and makes video works. She also developed a number of projects with other artists such as: Baktruppen, Jerome Bel, Christine De Smedt/les Ballets C de la B…

Her works include: Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, Proper Dancing in the Background, Ordinator, It’s a kind of magic, Holiday Shot, Volksballons, Good Hands, Handmade, Hauskonzert. Building after catastrophes, performed for the first time in December 2007 in Parma, is the result of the collaboration between Eva Meyer-Keller and Sybille Müller with two Italian children.

PANTAGRUEL SISTER-IN-LAW

directed by Silviu Purcarete
production National Theatre Radu Stanca Sibiu (Romania), Hungarian Theatre of Cluj (Romania) e Compagnie Silviu Purcarete (France)
language: speachless show
lenght: 80’
dal 26 al 28 giugno 8.00 pm
Teatro Bellini

With this performance, Purcarete pays hommage to Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, a Renaissance opera, encyclopaedic and open, which tells the of the undertaking of Pantagruel, son of the giant Gargantua. The number of operas is the linguistic exuberance which interlaces technical jargon, classic languages, dialects, original and inventional training, folding the narration to the most various kinds, from the philosophic despute to the baudy joke. Purcarete’s hommage is a “Rabelaisian” story with no words, certered on the figure of Pantagruel’s cousin, whose existence is not resisted in any text and yet emanates like a malicious perfume from each page of Rabelais. It is about a feminine figure such as language, that is the true protagonist of the opera of Rabelais, a generous and truculent language, able to take on all styles and forms.

Purcarete does not present a reduction of Pantagruel’s text, but in his hommage makes the echo of the opera vibrate using a saraband of actors as the vocabulary and rhythms as the grammer. In the objects brought into play such as the flour, wine, bread and other food, Georges Banu, Honorary President of the International Critics Association, reveals the traces of Purcarete’s “poetic materialism”: «The stage accepts the worldy materials as a concrete, fragmentary, and evocative presence». The spectator’s imagery is connected to a primary, elementary and essential universe on which one can take root, and starting from there, unfold.

Born in Bucharest in 1950, Silviu Purcarete graduated in Direction from the Romanian capital’s Theatrical Academy. After working with the Pietra Neamt Theatre (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette) and the Constanta Theatre (Ecuba di Euripide, Miles Gloriosus di Plauto), starting from 1978 worked with the Teatrul Mic of Bucharest (Giraudoux, Sartre, Shakespeare) and taught at the city’s theatrical Academy. In 1986 he staged an extraordinary Campiello di Goldoni which won the National Theatre Award. In 1992 he was named the artistic director of the Teatro Bulandra di Bucharest. In the 1990s he endorsed four performances celebrated by the public and by international critics: Ubu re with scenes from Macbeth, Titus Andronicus and Phaedra. In 1996 he was named Director of the Drama Centre of Limoges for which he produced, among others, Oresteia, Three Sisters and Don Giovanni, and where, a year later, he created a school of training for young actors. In 2002 he founded his own company, a permanate group with whom to share a common artistic course. Since 2003, Silviu Purcarete is a personal member of the Theatre Unione of Europe.

“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto catalin neghina “Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto pierre borasci“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto catalin neghina “Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto catalin neghina “Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto catalin neghina “Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto catalin neghina “Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto catalin neghina “Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto catalin neghina “Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto pierre borasci“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto pierre borasci“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto pierre borasci“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto pierre borasci“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto pierre borasci“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto pierre borasci“Pantagruel sister-in-law” by Silviu Purcarete (Romania, France)
foto pierre borasci