GLI SPOSI
romanian tragedy
Direction and interpretation and reduction / Elvira Frosini and Daniele Timpano
Text / David Lescot
Translation / Attilio Scarpellini
Light design / Omar Scala
Scenes and costumes / Alessandro Ratti
Artistic collaboration / Lorenzo Letizia
Assistant director / Camilla Fraticelli
Voice off / Valerio Malorni
Graphic design / Valentina Pastorino
A project by Frosini / Timpano
Production Gli Scarti, accademia degli artefatti, Kataklisma teatro
With the support of Armunia, Spazio ZUT !, Teatro di Roma, Asti Teatro
With Fabulamundi. Playwriting Europe
Gli sposi | romanian tragedy is the story of an ordinary couple of power. Nicolae Ceausescu and Elena Petrescu. Both come from the countryside. They meet in the Communist Party as a soldier. Nothing seems to distinguish them from their companions. Except that they are a little less gifted than average. Creatures without enamel in a world without horizon.
Whimsical and bloodthirsty dictators, these Macbeth and Lady Macbeth of the Balkans sowed fear in the Romanian people and then ended up summarily executed in front of the cameras, under the eyes of the world, on December 25, 1989.
Direction notes
What do we know about Nicolae Ceausescu and Elena Petrescu? What do we know about Romania?
Since 1989, the year of the fall of the Wall and the fall of the Ceaucescu, the narrative we have heard has been that of two capricious and bloodthirsty communist dictators, who sowed terror in the Romanian people, sinister and exaggerated tyrants who brought the their country for over twenty years. David Lescot's text starts exactly from this image. Gli sposi | romanian tragedy is the story of an ordinary couple of power: both come from the countryside, find themselves military in the Communist Party, nothing seems to distinguish them from their companions, except the fact that they are a little less gifted than the average. Creatures without enamel in a world without horizon. The author underlines the mediocrity, the grotesque and the absurd, until the tragic and ambiguous end: the summary trial and the shooting in front of the cameras, under the eyes of the world, on December 25, 1989. A Cartesian dramaturgy, with a reversal ending and a start ambiguous enough to leave space for two authors and actors like us for further critical reading. Were they as they told us? What has become of Communism? And what was the fate of Romania after their fall? We tried to love some of these two characters, described as two cynical tyrants and exalted by the delusion of omnipotence but also as two common pensioners, two poor figures, even a little tender and defenseless, towards whom we could not avoid feel an impossible empathy. We therefore tried to work on a balance between distance and closeness, and to graft ambiguity throughout the scenic construction, disseminating small critical cracks that could trigger questions on this monolithic narrative - that of the capitalist, democratic and triumphant West - and on we who are part of it today.
[Elvira Frosini and Daniele Timpano]
“A man and a woman. Very ordinary people, in twentieth century Romania. Both come from the countryside. A bit in the same way both of them find themselves in the Communist Party as a soldier. Nothing seems to distinguish them from their companions. Except that they are a little less gifted than average. They are creatures without enamel in a world without horizon. "
[David Lescot]