Some Prefer Nettles. 1982

Gli insetti preferiscono le ortiche (1982)

With Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Aurelio Cianciotta, Guidarello Pontani, Marco Solari, Alessandra Vanzi
Stage and poster design by Adriano Vecchiotti
Filmed by Alessandro Violi
Premiere: Rome, Padiglione Borghese, May 17, 1982.
Repeat performances: July/August 1982: Sydney (Australia), Seymour Center. – October 1982: London, I.C.A. – November 1982: Florence, S.M.S. di Rifredi.

Some Prefer Nettles. Presentation

by Scipioni Stefano
La Gaia Scienza set Gli insetti preferiscono le ortiche, from the novel by Tanizaki Junichiro, in the vast scenery of nature, choosing, by a congenial arrangement, the magic of the nocturnal dimension. The earthy component, already clear in their previous play, Scintille, takes shape in the evocation of a forest swarming with strange life forms, part human, part vegetable, part animal, in constant metamorphosis.

Staged nature is at once real and artificial, a poetic, imaginary space that includes several places continually breaching toward their outer reaches, both illusionistic (films and slides) and real, such as when with a final coup de theatre, after the backdrop partition has fallen, the theater area swells to include the landscape scenery of a Villa Borghese lightly veiled by night fog. The organization of the traditional spatial boundaries between the stage and the auditorium marks a turnabout with regard to the past.