national premiere
with Valentina Bravetti, Elisa Gandini, Davide Fabbri
and with the participation of: Terzo Rosetti, Thomas Lombardi
language tracks: Elisa Gandini
phonics consultant: Roberto Colinelli
anatomic table and costumes: Plastikart by Istvan Zimmermann
sound body: Elicheinfunzione
planning and lighting : Claudio Angelini
sign composition: Claudio Angelini,
Elisa Gandini,
Valentina Bravetti, Davide Fabbri
our thanks go to: Codex Audio
production: Fondazione Pontedera Teatro - 4 Cantieri per Fabbrica Europa,
Città di Ebla, Teatro Diego Fabbri, Comune di Forlì, Aksè
within the project
4 Cantieri Teatrali per Fabbrica Europa
"At the time when Oedipus (V cent. b.C.) appeared in the theatre, there still existed an ancient ritual, certainly of eastern origin: the Pharmakos. Each year the community of Athens chose one of its marginal members, afflicted by physical or psychic disabilities, and set a ban upon him, accompanying him in a procession to the gates of the city so that he would be expelled together with all the contaminations present in the social group". (J.P. Vernant)
The Pharmakos was supposed to take upon himself all evil violence and transform it, with his own death, into beneficial violence, peace and fertility; in classic Greek the word coming from this, pharmakon, means both "illness" and "remedy", "poison" and "antidote".
Movimento V - Anatomia del sacro (V Movement - Anatomy of the sacred) is the last stage of Pharmakos, a conceptual parable in five movements, of which the first (Embryo) already potentially contained the fundamental elements for a development structured in a series of successive evolutions.
The conceptual nucleus of Pharmakos is the possible encounter between the body as a sacrificial object, and the body as the subject of a medical-scientific investigation, the extremities of a parable on the nature and evolution of the sense of the body.
Movimento V - Anatomia del sacro sets out from the etymology of two words: anatomy as "cut" and sacred from "separation and irradiation". The two terms, juxtaposed, bring about the same effect as two mirrors placed one opposite the other.
In the performance the stage space is divided in half by a large transparent blackboard: on one side the anatomic table on which a body lies, on the other a normal table occupied by a computer and synthesisers linked to the blackboard which generates sound emission.
Three figures, the body on the anatomic table, the musician in control of his electronic machines and a teacher (?) who reproduces signs and words on the blackboard, weave their way inside language, or rather, the languages that they are called upon to express: body, sound and writing.
Unlike the other movements, Pharmakos V focuses on the significance of the body in terms of language, as the support capable of communicating or simply generating a multitude of signs not immediately encodable, therefore capable of approaching the sacred as a multiplication area of meaning. The use of the written sign and the sound element do nothing but align and restrict, enlarge and increase, the forest of signs that the body launches from the anatomic table.
The action takes place in the centre of the theatre and the spectators watch while circulating freely around it.
The idea is that they are the spectators in an anatomical theatre: a place which in ancient times brought together the scientific function (the study of the body) and an ambiguity that crossed over into the realm of the aesthetic and art.
Città di Ebla
Città di Ebla (City of Ebla) started in 2004 thanks to Claudio Angelini (director), Daniele Romualdi (actor), Simona Zauli (actress) and Valentina Bravetti (actress).
The name is a tribute to the great proto-Syrian civilisation, discovered in 1968 by an Italian expedition. This find altered our historical knowledge of the Anatolian-Mesopotamic era, bringing to light the great city-state which, in the third millennium b.C., already boasted a remarkable degree of social structure, writing, the use of materials and art.
"Città" ("City, Town") is also a maternal word containing within it the possibility of placing in context and clarifying the limitations but also of opening the way to a comparison with the rest of the territory.
As well as the cycle Pharmakos (Pharmakos - embrione, Movimento II - Atto barbaro, Movimento III - Orizzonti del campo, Movimento IV - Corpores fabrica and Movimento V - Anatomia del sacro) Città di Ebla also produced Othello (2005) and Wunderkammer (2006).