Life is a Dream

In the new staging at the Valserena Abbey, as already in the two autos sacramentales The great theatre of the world and La vida es sueño in site-specific at the Pilotta Monumental Complex in Parma, the sensitive actor –together with adolescent and elderly performers – becomes a central figure of dramaturgy, of the mise en site, of the profound meaning of theological-philosophical drama. Already in the autos, the poetic presence of the figures of the Poor and Man foreshadowed the protagonist Sigismund in the dual role of man/child. In the drama, again, the themes of illusion, mortal time “from cradle to grave” and “free will” are developed according to the privileged vision of innocent sensitivity, of the unmediated act, of the word that presents itself as sound even before defining itself in the sense.

The spatial transposition of the multiple conceptual, emotional, moral fields manifested in the monumental Fabbrica of the Abbey of Valserena will give plastic volume to the dramaturgical oscillation between reality and dream, between freedom and constraint, between self-determination and destiny, between sacrifice and redemption, between truth and fiction. Sensitive actors, Lenz's historical actresses and child performers are called to interpret the complexity of the work, guardians of an aesthetic perimeter that claims the cold beauty of the margin, the languid power of loss, the dry physics of suffering. Together with them, witnesses of the symmetrical vicissitude of the Via Crucis, the singers engaged vocally in the chorales and arias of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion, in dialogue with the soundscape created by the electronic composer Claudio Rocchetti. Through the multiple artistic forms – installation, performance, video projection, musical dramaturgy between baroque, modern and contemporary – this disturbing, noisy, disorganized, disheveled dimension expands beyond the boundaries of the subject and is transfused into a new common time free from conventions and by social norms, necessary to imagine, or dream, a possible poetic transformation of reality.

In Life is a Dream the protagonist – Prince Sigismund – lives locked up in a tower, excluded from birth by human consortium because he is destined by an astral design to be evil. The father-king decides to put the young prince to the test of the world and to have the certainty that his son is capable of pursuing good, and therefore of succeeding him to the throne, he restores his son's freedom. Temporarily reinserted into the social game, through artificial sleep, the prince will have to demonstrate that he knows how to reverse his destiny. Awakening in the palace, Sigismund proves incapable of controlling instincts and desires, of maintaining appropriate behavior towards authority, of sticking to compliance with norms, rules and laws, of perceiving the difference between good and evil. Thus confirming the astral omen, he will again be sentenced to imprisonment in the tower and social marginalization. Only the people, in open contrast to the decisions of the king, will sense the subversive nature of the prince and bring him to the head of the army to bring down the old power. Having experienced the bloody violence of reality and the danger of chaos, the prince chooses to absolve his father's sins, and having dissolved the human and political conflict, he decides to restore the ancient hierarchies, putting an end to the dream of revolution.