Lev. 2008

Muta Imago, Lev (2008)

creation: Glen Blackhall, Riccardo Fazi, Claudia Sorace, Massimo Troncanetti
direction: Claudia Sorace
drama and sound: Riccardo Fazi
stage tech: Massimo Troncanetti
technical direction: Maria Elena Fusacchia
stage mouvements: Fabio Ghidoni
stage dresses: Fiamma Benvignati
voice recordings: Irene Petris
piano recordings: Marco Guazzone
stage pictures: Laura Arlotti, Luigi Angelucci
performance Glen Blackhall
production Muta Imago 2008
coproduction Ztl-pro/Santasangre – Kollatino Underground; Kilowatt Festival
with the support of Inteatro/Scenari Danza 2.0; Amat; Regione Marche – Assessorato alle Politiche Giovanili e Ministero per le Politiche Giovanili e Attività sportive
in collaboration with AgoràKajSkenè (Aksè Crono 2008); Demetra – Produzioni Culturali
recommended by the jury at the tuttoteatro.com “Dante Cappelletti” 2007 award
Premiere Rome, ZTL-pro, Teatro Palladium, March 8, 2008

Lev. Presentation

by Gaia Polidori
The play takes shape through the eyes of Lev Zasetsky, a patient of the Russian psychiatrist Alexander Luria. Lev’s speech perception and memory have been impaired by a bullet wound.
To portray memory loss and the struggle of a man to reconstruct himself, Muta Imago starts from material reality. An eighteen square-meter space, three ceiling lamps, three sheets of plexiglass, flour. A visual-emotional machine created from a primary element, a symbolic sand, which they are made of, and which Lev’s objects, body and memory, his story, are soiled and corroded by (Lev being played by Glen Blackhall). Lev is alone in this space – inner and outer at the same time – to literally fight with the props that assail him, together with the voiceover that questions him (“Can you hear me?”) or that simply reproduces traces of the thoughts noted down in his diary.
Oblivion, memory, identity. The playwright Riccardo Fazi thus starts from details, micronarratives, to work up to universals. As director Claudia Sorace states: “Is a man the sum of his memories, or does a man exist regardless of his past?”