Press

Having seen the show, it appears to take two themes – abuse by the father, and the destruction of the environment. How do you feel that these two subjects relate to each other?

I think we should start with this story. The Trojan war. Agamemnon the chief of all Greeks is asked by the Gods to kill his own daughter in order to have winds flying in the right direction and start the War with Troy. What does it mean? This is not really an historical fact. It’s an archetype showing us how much men had to kill their own ‘female’ side. In my play the Mother says about the Father: ‘Daughters are their father’s soul’.                                                               

 In my writing I am constantly haunted by this subject. The female soul is also Nature. This civilization has been aggressive against women from the start and then later through Christianity, which separated totally body from soul, aggressive also against Nature. It’s a process that led us where we are now. Science only recently, through quantum physic, is opening new ways of thinking, but is quite recent. I speak about this in a book I wrote.

Would you identify your work as an attempt to address serious social issues through theatre as a form of activism? What does theatre as activism mean for you?

This play is based on a friend of mine real experience and it’s an intimate work with mythical scope, where the personal experiences between child and parent are reflected in our wider relationship with Mother Nature and the evolution of our climate. In fact when my friend was telling me her story I immediately envisioned a wider perspective. The father here is also a well-known meteorologist who is aware of climate change. He wants to save the Earth: he believes Man is the cause of the disaster, therefore Man should be the solution. He is lost in his own delusion because he was the first to commit a crime having abused his own daughter.  

So a multiple layer of storytelling gives to this play a strong metaphorical meaning. I believe theater to be the only place where in the dark you are confronted with another human being feelings that are experienced in that precise moment. No technology. This is so vital for getting in touch with our deeper emotions. So yes I do believe theater can have an active role now. We are at a crucial point in our civilization. Many people do not realize how dangerous the situation we are living in is, even if many scientists are more and more alarmed. But as my meteorologist says in the play: ‘ What if they are using us as a cover?…they send us on television…they let us having conferences…but what if no one of them cares?’ And this is definitely what people in the world are start thinking about the decision makers and who is behind them. 

I am going to Edinburgh fringe with this play for a three-weeks full run in August. And I definitely see myself carrying a message to the people. Its necessary. And urgent.

Since there are three characters in the script, what made you decide to make it as a one-person show?

I really appreciate you asking me this. You see these three characters are actually coming from the same Place. They are like Pirandello’s characters in a way. They are three but one. There is something like a ‘higher dimension’ where they belong. They are coming from there and they become humans just to tell us the story of this abuse. Then they go back to their Light at the end of the play. You see in this play words as Water, Door, Climate Change. Baby’s cries, Vagina resonate through a path that leads us elsewhere. We are inclined to total despair when suddenly we find our selves in a blue room: a vision of a future. And the Daughter in the play says: ‘That Ancient Feeling? Do you remember that Ancient Feeling?’ I will say is this Feeling that will bring us into the Future.                                                                                        

What kind of impact do you hope that the show will have on audiences?

I hope audiences will awake. People will start questioning themselves. Not only marching in the streets to ask for a better future but also really questioning their lives and their own behavior. Men and women of different age. And in my play this Mother does not see what is in front of her. So she becomes somehow ‘accessory’ to the crime as many women do, closing their eyes. But the Future is their own. They have to open the eyes and find their knowledge again. This knowledge is slowly coming to Light. Women in Ancient Times were great astrophysicists…and this Mother is an amateur astrophysicist…Not there yet! And Science and Wisdom were linked. They don’t seem to be really like this nowadays.

Do you see the work within any tradition – are there any artists who you would say have influenced the process of creating Father?

I was influenced surely by Pinter writing. Pinter had an amazing courage facing the way people are communicating with each other in our contemporary world, lying to themselves all the time.                            

Chekhov already envisioned that. But Pinter went so deep in what I call his deflagration of hypocrisy. I love his irony and I am using the same ironic key in my play. Any contemporary playwright should just worship him and thank him for what he did. And then, as I mentioned before, Luigi Pirandello, for his awareness of the very thin line between true and untrue in the way people face life: hiding. And their longing for another dimension. But I do believe Pinter also reaches this level when he says: ‘Apart from the known and the unknown what else is there?’.  He is not only talking about facts. The question is much more …galactic, I would say.

The Italian preview of Francesca Bartellini’s show at Madre’s museum Events in Naples

At Madre the contemporary is staged: the Italian preview of the show Mother by Francesca Bartellini, will take place Saturday January the 26^th, at 6.30 p.m., in the RE_PUBBLICA Madre room, and also is scheduled a weekend of visits in the exhibitions and collections of the museum to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust in occasion of the Memorial Day

Saturday January 26^th at 11.00 a.m.: Robert Mapplethorpe. Choreography for an art exhibition

A guided tour through the great retrospective dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the greatest photographers of the 20^thcentury, who had a complex and passionate relationship with the territory of Campania, when in occasion of one of his visit, he established an emphatic relationship with it, thanks to the fruitful collaboration with the Neapolitan gallerist Lucio Amelio. In the exhibition there are more than 160 works, set up in an hypothetical dialogue with archaeological, ancient and modern, carefully selected, on loan from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, and a selection of drawings, paintings, sculptures and artifacts from the Museum and Real Bosco of Capodimonte, to create a dialogue between the ancient and the contemporary that will allow to analyze the special relationship between the classical references and the present baroque tension, as a constitutive element of the artist’s photographic aesthetics.

The exhibition, curated by Laura Valente and Andrea Viliani, and organized in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation in New York, is a tribute to Mapplethorpe for the thirtieth anniversary of the first major retrospectives dedicated in 1988 to the artist, including the traveling exhibition The Perfect Moment, whose first chapter was presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in December of that same year, just a few months before the death of Mapplethorpe, at the age of 43, on March 9^th, 1989.

Booking recommended / Free participation / Paid entrance to the museum

SaturdayJanuary 26^th at 6.30 p.m., in the RE_PUBBLICA Madre room (ground floor), a national preview will be staged: Madre, the show/performance by Francesca Bartellini, presented by Ipazia Production and by the Donnaregina Foundation for contemporary arts, in collaboration with Macro Asiloof Rome.

Francesca Bartellini continues her path in the Sacred Feminine, the only real strength that is able to accompany a deep re-foundation of values, which becomes the fulcrum of the show that combines performance and video-art through an aesthetic and expressive research. The monologue Mother has as a protagonist the figure of Mary Magdalene and itevokes the poetics of a choreographer among the most important of the 20^thcentury, Pina Bausch.It is also part of the diptych Two, together with Father written by Bartellini and directed by the English director Susan Wordsfold, which will be instead presented in April at the Glasgow’s Tron Theater. On stage, violence against a woman takes place as if it were a sacrifice: the 21^stcentury presents itself with a ferocious grin. The figure of Mary Magdalene emerges: the historical figure and her boundless iconography, her apocryphal Gospel, the story of childhood, the sacred couple, the HierosGamos. The woman will reveal her motives through the centuries, shouting her indignation towards the brutality of the new millennium and projecting herself towards another future: the Way of the Heart.

The images, edited by Francesca Fini, interact with the protagonist, becoming characters, atmospheres and dramatical fragments themselves, with exits and entries that bear many references to the medieval theater. The music, that goes from the Renaissance references up to the atonalcontemporary, is performed on the harpsichord by Angelo Trancone.

Admission with courtesy ticket from 2 euros while seats last.

Mother at the Mother’s museum, mise-en-scene an abuse-sacrifice

A national preview in via Settembrini’s museum, on stage a theatrical performance, by Francesca Bartellini, born from a research on the figure of Mary Magdalene

by Stefano de Stefano

Mother at the Mother’s museum and it is not a wordplay. The performance-show’s title that the actress, director and writer Francesca Bartellinibringsinto the stage is today at 6.30 p.m. in national previewin via Settembrini’smuseum. The setting-up is presented by Ipazia Production and the Donnaregina Foundation, in collaboration with Macro Asilo of Roma.

Mother’skey lies in the breaking down of fences between genres and languages, which in the 2000s is rediscovering new conceptual and technological forces. «The show – explains the protagonist – is also a performance, for me there is no difference. Such as in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, in which I recognize myself». An aesthetic vision that coincides more and more with the new view of the museum chaired by Laura Valente and directed by Andrea Viliani, as demonstrates the project linked to Robert Mapplethorpe. «For me – she continues – the central point is still the actor-performer, because without himthe theater cannot exist, and I believe that to do so bodies and life are central elements in order to get closer to the public».

It’s a natural evolution of the previous work by the Milanese artist, Sermones, played at the Quartieridell’Arte’s festival in Viterbo in a project with Giancarlo Giannini in 2014 and restaged at the Pacta in Milanin 2017. Therefore, at Mother’smuseum performances and video art will intertwine, as the result of a research around the figure of Mary Magdalene. «Protagonist with all her boundless iconography, her apocryphal Gospel, the sacred couple, the HierosGamos, and the encounter with Jesus. And thanks to an elasticspatio-temporal dimension, she will face the brutality of the present in the New Millennium».

The public will thus witness violence on a woman consumed as if it were a sacrifice, here and now in the 21st century, with the image of a young and beautiful girl who breaks down, re-emerging as the emblematic figure of Mary Magdalene. «Who will finally reveal her motives through the centuries, and she will free herself from chains, since her story is”another”, and such as Pina Bausch’s poetics it will move towards the ‘Path of the Heart’ of the feminine’SacredIntellect’». The video art work, created by Francesca Fini, will then dialogue with the protagonist on stage, becoming itself a character, an atmosphere and a dramaturgic fragment, with references to the medieval theater.

The music, which goes from the Renaissance to the atonal contemporary, will be performed at the harpsichord by Angelo Trancone. The monologue Mother is part of the diptych Two, together with Father, written in English and supervised by the director Susan Wordsfold, stagingin Glasgow in April, before performing in summer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and then in London.

Many more activities the ones of the Mother Museum. At 11 in the morning there will be a guided tour through the retrospective dedicated to Mapplethorpe, while tomorrow at the same time, in occasion of the Memorial Day will be helda performative path, Diversa_Mente, about freedom, denied rights and the universal value of diversity, not to forget the tragedy of the Shoah. At 5 p.m., Guess who?will be played, a game visit for the art lovers who will challenge themselves on the history of the Mother from 2005 up to today. As a price there is a catalog dedicated to the artist, protagonist of the path.