15

In Reggio Calabria, the tale of the “Tree lines”, a hybrid of ritual and theatre, comes to life.

It was in Reggio Calabria, in the studio of the SCENA NUDA Theatre Company, that the group of Bruna Bonanno (Italy), Tiago Filipe (Portugal), Felipe Ipar (Uruguay) and Matthieu Pastore (Italy), with the help of tutor Teresa Timpano, continued to work on the project already outlined during their residency in Naples. Treasuring the history and myths of the city, thanks also to a fruitful meeting with historian Pasquale Amato, the structure and characters of The line and the tree became increasingly defined, culminating in the work in progress presented at the Castello Aragonese.

Tree lines, the new title of the work, written by Bruna Bonanno and directed by Felipe Ipar, is a performance halfway between the ritual and the theatrical, consisting of two narrative levels – one, that of the fairy tale, tells of two characters, symbols of two different worlds, which undergo countless metamorphoses during the narrative and finally become trees; the other, that of the stage, sees two actors, here Tiago Filipe and Matthieu Pastore, organise “The Feast of the Tree Lines”, established to celebrate this union, and invite the public to join in the celebrations – and three pivotal moments – a walk/procession, led by two actors and with two different starting points, during which the narration of the fable takes place; the scenic representation of the fairy tale itself, staged around a tree, with the audience placed in a circle and in two different parts of the space; finally, the interaction with the audience, i.e. the celebration of the myth through the rituals of the territory they inhabit – all represented at two particularly evocative and symbolic moments of the day, dawn and dusk.

The project will continue to be developed in the months to come through virtual meetings and in a new residency planned from June 23th to 30th, 2022 in Lebanon.