Director Alessandro Conti's debut work reinterprets the tragedy of Ajax, transcribed by Hölderlin, as the lament οίμοι (oímoi) and hypochondriac depression of a hero with violated virility. Telamonian Ajax from Salamis, complaining, must die, but the poet's lament forces him into a conceptless, gently suspended synthesis that makes us feel alienated in our own home.
In a syntonic progression with the research and performance compositions on the Iliad and tragedies curated by Maria Federica Maestri and Francesco Pititto, the different explorations on the theme of violence investigated by philosopher Orsola Rignani, dramaturg Lorenza Guerrini, and directors Alessandro Conti and Beatrice Baruffini will have a long-lasting persistence.
Creative presences associated by linguistic, poetic, ethical and aesthetic affinity, capable of drawing significant pages in the artistic geography of Lenz Foundation.
The thought-principle of ‘Winning the loss’, the fundamental outcome of Hölderlin's reflection on the tragic, takes place tremendously and violently in the figures of the wounded heroines and fallen heroes, Cassandra, Ajax, Penthesilea, Hecuba, and painful exploration in the definition of evil through the writings of Hannah Arendt.
But the dis-obediences, dis-tractions, dis-solutions, dis-said that will constitute the research project on the potential charge of the prefix dis- will also provoke multiple reactions and conceptual mutations that will stimulate the mapping of violence in our time.
The tragedy of Ajax transcribed by Hölderlin is the lament οίμοι (oímoi) and hypochondriac depression of a hero with violated virility.
Ajax Telamonius of Salamis, complaining, must die, but the poet's lament forces him into a conceptless, gently suspended synthesis that makes us feel alienated in our own home.
This form of melancholic heroism-in the medical sense of the term used by Hippocrates to Galen-lies in the persistence of an impossible lament, exasperated by a language that turns against itself, and which finds no listening in the age when even the mnemonic skill of the lyrical self has fallen into ruin.
Ajax, invincible on the battlefield in strength and moral integrity, falls. He falls because he doesn't get what he wants. He falls because he doesn't receive what, perhaps, is his due. He falls because he can do nothing but fall.
Tragic action, usually, is the story of the return to order that the violation of the limit makes necessary. But in Ajax it is the very limit that is subtracted: the boundary between human and divine is open. It's like an abyss.
In this fall, made eternal by the poet, Ajax back and forth does not want to see: a figure of a powerful man without a future, heedless of the unblemished past.
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From Friedrich Hölderlin's 72 verses on Sophocles' Ajax
Translation Francesco Pititto
Direction, dramaturgy, sound Alessandro Conti
Actor Fabrizio Croci
Martial art Francesca Grisenti Sensei
Costumes Archivio Lenz Fondazione
Stage lights Alice Scartapacchio
Scenic care Giulia Mangini, Paolo Romanini
Artistic direction of the project Maria Federica Maestri_Francesco Pititto
Curating Elena Sorbi
Organization Ilaria Stocchi
Press office, communication Giovanna Pavesi
Production Lenz Fondazione
With the support of
MiC_Regione Emilia-Romagna_Comune Parma
Fondazione Monteparma_Fondazione Cariparma
National premiere inside Insolito Festival
September 11-12-13, 2025
Claudia Olimpia Rossi
Interview with Conti and Croci
We met Alessandro Conti and Fabrizio Croci: the director and actor reveal the turreted persistence of the Mycenaean shield of Ajax in the philosophical arsenal of our time. «Falls» is part of the Philosophical-Performative Reconnaissance on the Form of Violence.
Valeria Ottolenghi
Downfalls, Fabrizio Croci's Ajax: Between Delirium and Dignity
Now Ajax is in the coffin: in the end almost a conquest. [...] It is with pains similar to childbirth, rhythmic, that the actor, a sort of light helmet on his head, lifts himself up, with loud moans. Suddenly he turns to the audience and, in a quiet voice, says: «now you will know everything». It seems that it is here, almost the result of those painful efforts, that the formation of the double is determined, so that in the end it will be Ajax himself who will close his coffin, complete with screwdriver. [...] Powerful, thunderous applause for Fabrizio Croci.