9:00, Artegna
Teatro Lavaroni
In a historical context marked by conflict, Hänsel and Gretel recount their experiences of childhood during wartime.
Director
Veronica Risatti
Performers
Laura Mirone, Veronica Risatti, Giulio Macrí (o Fanno Oliva)
Choreography by
Fannj Oliva
Costume disigner
Emily Scorzato
Lights and set designer
Andrea Coppi
Music consulting/editing by
Adele Pardi e Stefano Artini
Product by
Bottega Buffa Circovacanti
With the support of
Fondazione Caritro
Type of show
Autor Theater
Duration
50 minutes
Age
7+ years
Synopsis
Hansel is seven years old, full of imagination and eager to play.
Gretel is ten years old and enjoys joining in her brother’s games, especially when they involve incredible battles. One day, while they are fighting each other, there is a loud bang, perhaps from a bomb.
‘Who did that?’
asks Hansel, frightened.
It was me! –
Gretel replies, torn between fear and the desire to impress her brother.
They resume playing, but the atmosphere around them has changed.
Their father arrives and prepares to take them to safety. Hansel and Gretel think it is an improvised game and have fun until they realise they have been left at the edge of a forest.
Director’s notes
Hänsel and Gretel – Childhood in War is a show dedicated to experimenting with performative languages for a new narration of the fairy tale. It is a production that prioritises the use of the body and the semantics of action over words. We decided to stage this story using the language of dance theatre in order to offer an inclusive theatrical experience that overcomes language barriers and reaches as wide and diverse an audience as possible, while avoiding any kind of rhetoric: choosing the right words to address such delicate and complex issues, especially when you have not experienced them first-hand, is always very risky. Narrating through the body and movement helps us to be universal and non-judgmental, to evoke environments and emotions, inviting viewers to “see” beyond words.
In our contemporary historical context, marked by conflict, we have chosen to tell the typical story of a brother and sister abandoned in the woods to fend for themselves, in order to explore the theme of childhood in war. The stage is sparse, leaving ample space for bodies that run, wait, succumb to exhaustion, and wake up sometimes in a dream, sometimes in a nightmare. Hansel and Gretel are a boy and a girl abandoned by a father forced to hope that the unknown is safer than their own home. Hansel and Gretel’s forest becomes a single metaphor for all those seas and rivers that are borders to be crossed in order to enter unknown and, at least in appearance, safer countries. The little bird that wakes them from their sleep, into which they have fallen from exhaustion, is a metaphor for the ferrymen who promise safe passage to the gingerbread house, a promised land that often turns out to be a place of long waits and sometimes even detention and torture from which to escape.
Video trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3arjoyMTyt0
Link to the show: https://www.bottegabuffacircovacanti.it/spettacoli/hanselegretel.html
Link to the company: www.bottegabuffacircovacanti.it