RC DAPHNE_You Must Be My Tree
The theme of shapes and the mutation of bodies takes on linguistic centrality in the dramaturgical project of Radical Change. Body of theater research, visual, filmic, space, I am sonorous THE METAMORPHOSES of Ovid translated by Maria Federica Maestri and Francesco Pititto into contemporary performative writing.
MY SOUL PUSHES ME TO SAY OF FORMS CHANGED INTO NEW BODIES – This is the incipit of Ovid's books – and as always through extreme and radical fidelity to the word of the text, gutted, translated and adapted for performative action, an original work of scenic installation and film creation, an artistic project is built and consists of eleven paragraphs inspired by as many Metamorphoses: Phoenix, Echo_Narcissus, Orpheus_Eurydice, Ceyx_Alcyone, Hecuba, Pyramus_Thisbe, Philemon_Baucis, Cypress, Daphne, Io.
Lenz neo-baroque performance segment, Daphne_You must be my tree is a paragraph of Radical Change, visual translation, sound and spatial inspired by The Metamorphoses of Ovid. The performance was presented in numerous international festivals in Italy and Europe.
Daphne_You must be my tree constitutes one of the twelve paragraphs of Radical Change, performative writing from The Metamorphoses by Ovid presented at numerous international festivals.
The mythological story of the nymph Daphne, devoted to the pleasure of hunting but troubled by Apollo's amorous desire, is reinterpreted through a performative segment that places the exclusive relationship with the material wood at the center of the dramaturgy, symbol of the metamorphosis of the nymph into a tree. If the mythological story in fact narrates that the graceful nymph fled from Apollo and was transformed into a laurel tree after her prayer to the Peneus river (his father), the performance presents the nymph as an iconic young blonde, memory of the young women of Jean-Luc Godard's films.
Daphne it is a plastic inflection on the geometric identity of the virginal body, intact, pure. The bloodless young girl takes shape from the silhouette of the performer herself, creating in double volumetric cadence a silhouette-figurine composed of a mosaic of residual wood, which measure a few centimetres. The wooden material, of vegetative substance, it aspires to become a new and true body by sinking into the actress as a metamorphic work of extreme physical impact. Daphne's body, who only has contact with matter, becomes for a moment as eternal and powerful as wood. If dramaturgy is based on the exclusive and unique relationship with the material-wood, the sacrificial gestures and micro-actions are structured in an extremely simplified scenic environment: the young blonde nymph enters the scene with a male briefcase that she keeps inside, like a secret document, the prayer he will address to his father Peneus to escape Apollo's loving desire. His hands, ready for prayer, using pieces of wood, they build a bodily altar to announce the imminent metamorphic act that will soon be granted to her. Alone in the urban grove where she lives eternally, Daphne obeys the sole ecstasy of her orthopedic clogs, and begs that his adolescence is a timeless eclampsia.
Inspired by The Metamorphoses of Ovid
Creation | Francesco Pititto, Maria Federica Masters
Translation, playwriting, imagoturgy | Francesco Pititto
Regia, installation, plastic elements | Maria Federica Masters
Musica | Andrew Azzali
Performer | Valentina Barbarini
Technical care | Alice Scartapacchio
Production | Lenz Foundation
Duration | 35 minutes
Lenz creates enigmatic and fascinating shows that reject linear narrative. In Radical Change a very strong baroque and postmodern visual sign that recalls the atmospheres of Matthew Barney. The protagonists are the bodies, surrounded by projections, masked behind transparent plastic curtains, sunk in Plexiglas placentas, in a scene similar to an alchemical laboratory. Naked bodies moving with decisive gestures to looped music, up to the threshold of dance. The exasperating insistence on images challenges the viewer to do the math, radically, with visions that continually envelop and change his own life.
The Corriere della Sera, Radical Change by Lenz Refractions, Massimo Marino, 15 maggio 2007
[…] the magnetic young actress Valentina Barbarini with a flashy blonde wig, on the ground a small pile of seeds next to a wooden mosaic ready to replace the girl's body… the performance boasts the music of Andrea Azzali, that with his fundamental contribution, it gives that extra pinch of uniformity that makes the Lenz shows so complete in their uniqueness.
The Unity, Rossella Battisti, 2007
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