Imagine standing by a window at night, on the sixth or seventeenth or forty-third floor of a building. The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows…
The Lonely City, Olivia Laing
In her novel The Lonely City, Olivia Laing walks the streets of New York and draws a private cartography along its abyss of isolation. New York becomes all cities, finding itself populated by six very special tenants.
Città sola is a modular project by lacasadargilla which for Short Theatre 2023 will be decanted as an installation/acoustic performance, an immersive work for voices and score in which one can get lost without losing the story’s thread. The novel’s chapters are spatialised by means of S.T.ONE, tetrahedral speakers that refract and diffuse sound thanks to a combined system of dynamic, timbral and spatial factors, transforming it into plastic, tangible material.
Uniquely the soundscape of Città Sola #Var. 3. Factory Roma combines celestial atmospheres, New York ballads, jazz, rock and folk that will conflate with noises stolen from around the city of Rome – seagulls, sirens, the hiss of tram tracks, garbage trucks – all performed in real time. Close-ups and background sounds are articulated into a game of perception that both invites and trains three-dimensional listening. An instruction sheet with relevant signage are the tools given to an audience in order to allow it to walk through the streets of this lonely city and perhaps experience the vertigo that being alone produces.
lacasadargilla comes together around Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli – author and director -, Alessandro Ferroni – director and sound designer -, Alice Palazzi – actress and project coordinator and Maddalena Parise – researcher and visual artist, a mobile group of actors, musicians, playwrights and visual artists.
As an enlarged ensemble that works on shows, installations, special projects and curatorships, lacasadargilla grafts its works onto original writings, literary rewritings and texts of contemporary dramaturgy. The crux of its most recent research is a broad theme around the extinction of all those delicate and complex systems that govern relationships, imaginations and ecosystems. When the Rain Stops Falling (2019) won three Ubu awards – including Best Director, and the National Association of Theatre Critics award.
In 2021 Caryl Churchill’s Heart’s Desire debuted, receiving wide critical acclaim and an Ubu award nomination. Also in 2021, in collaboration with Marta Cuscunà and Marco D’Agostin, lacasadargilla realised the project Ogni volta unica la fine del mondo for the summer season of Milan’s Piccolo Teatro. In March of 20222, also at the Piccolo, where lacasadargilla are associated artists, they staged the show A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction by Miranda Rose Hall. Meanwhile in 2022 they debuted with Il Ministero della Solitudine at the Vie Festival. In February 2023 they premiered Anatomy of a suicide by Alice Birch at the Piccolo Teatro.
#Var. 3. Factory Roma
project by Alessandro Ferroni, Maddalena Parise / lacasadargilla
voices Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli, Emiliano Masala, Tania Garribba
soundscapes Alessandro Ferroni
project S.T.ONE Giuseppe Silvi
sound design Pasquale Citera
set-up space, lights and concept lacasadargilla
coordination Alice Palazzi
assistant director Matteo Finamore
Città sola is produced by Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa, lacasadargilla, Angelo Mai, Bluemotion, Teatro Vascello La Fabbrica dell’Attore, in network with Margine Operativo /Attraversamenti Multipli
Città sola #Var. 3. Factory Roma is produced by Short Theatre
in the frame of the project Insieme Siamo Arte 2023 realised by Città Metropolitana di Roma Capitale and ATCL
im. courtesy of the artist
