Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, precursor of German Romanticism, protagonist of Georg Büchner's short story Lenz, an admirer of Shakespeare considered the Genius, a short metaphysical poem by the author dedicated to Shakespeare's ghost, an Actress and an Actor in a Mirror.
'Lenz of Lenz' is a multi-year project that confirms the fertile and extraordinary relevance of Jakob Lenz's visions through the original dramatic and imagoturgical re-editions of some of his works: Catharina von Siena, Shakespears Geist, The Soldiers and the short story Lenz that Georg Büchner wrote inspired by the life of Jakob Lenz.
Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, who lived in the second half of the eighteenth century, was a nomadic and restless author, at times touched by psychic disturbances, romantic enlightenment for Georg Büchner and modern virtue by Bertolt Brecht. With the pre-Marxist social sensitivity of his dramas, he anticipated the great themes of the twentieth century: antimilitarism, social injustice, violence against women, criticism of patriarchy and dominant male power. It is under the sign of his anti-rhetorical philosophy and his prophetic vision of the crisis of Western man, that Maestri and Pititto founded Lenz Rifrazioni in 1985.
From Shakespears Geist by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz
Dramaturgy, composition, imagoturgy Francesco Pititto
Installation, costumes Maria Federica Maestri
Cast Fabrizio Croci, Barbara Voghera
Curatring Elena Sorbi
Organization Ilaria Stocchi
Communication, press office Giovanna Pavesi
Graphic design, promotion Alessandro Conti
Light design Maria Federica Maestri, Alice Scartapacchio
Technical set-up Alice Scartapacchio
Production manager Giulia Mangini
Production Lenz Foundation
Premiere March 11, 2026, Lenz Teatro, Parma
Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, precursor of German Romanticism, protagonist of Georg Büchner's short story Lenz, an admirer of Shakespeare considered the Genius, a short metaphysical poem by the author dedicated to Shakespeare's ghost, an Actress and an Actor in a Mirror.
These are the elements –in osmotic tension – in the field, in a field of body electromagnetic waves that bounce particles of words and memory, rational pushes and gestures animated by visual epiphanies, "I here or I not here" like the boson of God which, in that field of action, in a ten-thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, gives mass and matter and then transforms and disappears into the universe. And we, and our bodies on the scene, in imitation and emulation of God, become his Monkey who is given the short time of an hour to let us listen again to the echoes of grandiose works. In the time capsule, the contours appear undefined, blurred into the optical white of a painting filled with plaster busts, pieces of statues, simulacra of eras and heroes of a time whose great return is still awaited. She and He wait and the Phantom shows up.
The Genie has reappeared, the Monkey has intoned his cri animal, shouts and high-pitched noises, powerful roars, grunts, but also chirps and whistles as calls of peace. No longer the femur raised as a weapon by the monkey from 2001. A space odyssey but the rediscovered word and once again weapon of language, action and gesture, of a contemporary Sturm und Drang movement.
The Feast of the Monkey of God remains in those who have been there, in those who have seen, participated.
"_As long as your wrist flies like this,/your life warms/as your eyelid blinks,/as long as your eye glistens/full of inexpressible desires/that vent on your cheeks."
