Mendel. 2012

Mendel. 2012.

Written and directed by Riccardo Caporossi
Production Club Teatro Rem & Cap Proposte
With Daria Deflorian, Vincenzo Preziosa, Riccardo Caporossi e Margherita D’Andrea, Andrea Cardinali, Alessandro Caruso, Giada Oliva, Raffaele Vermiglio, Giorgio Volpe
2 billiards players Riccardo A. Ballerini and Antonio Tiberi
2 chess players Claudia Brancadoro and Daniele Caporossi
6 person characters
Light Nuccio Marino
Phonic collaboration Lorenzo Salandri
Technical collaboration Emiliano Marini
Organization Gloria Caporossi
Project by the Education Department of MAXXI
First performance Rome, MAXXI Museum, Gallery 5, 19 October 2012.

Scenic writing and synopsis of Mendel

by Riccardo Caporossi
The work takes its cue from Stefan Zweig’s “Buchmendel”, the story of a man who has probably not read all the books in the world, but who knows them all. An exalted, superb collector from a parallel world. A world made of paper for a character drawn in charcoal. A bibliomaniac who lives in a café, in a city, only for his books. As a home, a table. Two characters who evoke his presence and who have witnessed and recount his story: Mr. Z., and the washroom custodian. Around Mendel’s story a series of instances occur in an environment known as ‘recreation room’: pool players and chess players; six waiters who use the room as rehearsal room for a performance they are preparing about war, not only in a military sense (the action takes place during WWI), but also in a wider sense about profound economical, political and social differences; about how, in today’s globalised world, financial competition is the main strategy of war. Other presences, ordinary punters, carry the human condition without compassion, showing themselves simply in their roles, the way we could observe such figures in everyday life.
The piece of theatre intends to move beyond the story, it wants to write and in parallel display a paradigm of characters who reveal their identity as people, their lives as real lives, as full, accomplished lives; as Jakob Mendel writes.