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LIVE PERFORMANCES

Relations between humans and plants are at the root of human civilisation. The (first) agriculture revolution, during the Neolithic period, brought a wide-scale transition of many human cultures, allowing for settlements and global population growth. Experimenting with plants and observing their behaviour led to the domestication of plants into crops which in turn sparked wider environmental and societal transformations. An unprecedented impact of humans on the global ecosystem and our current Anthropocene state was the result.

CLOROFILLA

Generative music performance

Project creator: Sofia Albanese
Visual Artist: Emanuele Costanzo
Music Composer / Performer: Sofia Albanese


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PRIMULE

Theatrical dialogue with live music

Written & Directed by: Angela Pepi
Performers: Ilaria Marcelli and Matteo Castellino
Music: Bale
Costumes: Eleonora Riccio


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SEVEN WAYS TO ASK FOR FORGIVENESS

Body and voice performance

Written by: Chiara Crupi and Luca Vonella (Teatro a Canone)
Inspired by an idea of: Franco Ruffini
Dramaturgy: Chiara Crupi
Pedagogical project: Luca Vonella and Chiara Crupi
With actors: Valentina Antonaros, Ivan Carnevale, Piergiuseppe Carucci, Ilaria Fantozzi, Ilaria Giorgi, Giulia Nemiz, Francesco Maria Punzo, Francesca Vignali from VIVARIUM project And with: Luca Vonella (Teatro a Canone)

Thanks to: Alessio Mazzei, Fabio Gentili.

The song La Danza dell’ape is written and composed and played with the actors by Anna Sofia Albanese

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OBTP LIVE PERFORMANCES GALLERY

CLOROFILLA
Sofia Albanese & Emanuele Costanzo

PROJECT
Clorofilla is a generative music performance where sounds and visuals are linked together to create a virtual reality which explores and unveils the network of symbiosis underlying all human-nature processes.
The live music performance is accompanied by a projection of a real time rendering world placed behind the music composer, who explores it and gives life to its natural elements through sound input signals and a hand tracking system connected to the camera of the virtual reality.
The audience is transported on an immersive emotional journey into the vegetable realm where music and sound give voice to virtual plants and trees.

PERFORMANCE OUTLINE
The live performance is divided into three main acts: it opens with an exploration of the vegetable realm, it then focuses on the interaction between the performer and a plant avatar and ends with a journey through the universe, between galaxies and planets, with a final act on the future of our planet.

METHODOLOGY
Electronic music and organic sounds coming from Ableton Live will be linked to virtual objects through Max, in the Unreal Engine virtual world.
The performer interacts with the virtual world through sounds and a camera mapped with an optical hand tracking module, establishing a real time interactive dialogue with virtual plants via sound and visual signals

CONCEPT
The purpose of this project is to highlight the potential of music and AI in decrypting, recreating and communicating the complex system of interactions that shape our reality; humans-plants relationship is at the centre of the investigation. If we look closely at plants and at their communication networks, it becomes apparent their vital rhythm is highly sensitive to their surroundings, and their ability to perceive and adapt to changes is unparalleled. Indeed, natural ecosystems are nothing more than societies based on the principle of relationship. Unlike humans they do not recognize hierarchies but favour widespread and decentralised democracies that promote mutual support as an instrument of coexistence and progress.
Experiencing the interdependency of biological and digital layers of reality, we can raise awareness about the plant world and draw inspiration from nature to orient ourselves wisely toward a more sustainable future.

 

ARTISTS

 

Sofia Albanese

Sofia is a Berlin-based composer and producer, specialised in music composition and sound design for cinema and video-games. Her extensive experience in classical and jazz music combined with her conservatory studies merged into different electronic music projects. Over the past few years, she focused on digital tools for content creation, deepening softwares like Ableton, Max MSP, After Effect, Unreal Engine. Nowadays, her artistic research focuses on the audio–visual art world, looking at new releases of audio visual engines and mapping technologies to unveil the impressive power of multimodal art.

 

Emanuele Costanzo

Emanuele is a visual artist for multimedia content, specialised in the production of 3D modelling. His skills and experiences are oriented to real time rendering, augmented and mixed reality. His background is substantiated by rigorous artistic studies, fueled by almost 20 years of experience with the most advanced 3D software and game engines. During his career Emanuele Costanzo has been a 3D artist for various customers and partners, managing projects for companies such as FCA, Hawaiian Airlines, COOP, MSD, ACEA, Honda.

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PRIMULE
Angela Pepi

Plot

The piece features Daphne and Iacinto, both turned into plants by the gods. One night, among the trees of a garden, Iacinto is crying: he has been transformed into a flower by the God Apollo and he is desperate. The sounds of his tears reach Daphne who was also once human and then transformed into a tree by her mother Gaea to escape Zeus’s love. She asks him the reason for his grief. Iacinto explains that he longs to return to his human condition. Daphne responds by making him reflect on the beauty of being part of the plant world and underlines that he has now become the same flower that Iacinto used to walk on without care.

 

Director’s Notes

Human beings are an integral part of nature – not detached from it. If we want to have a future as a species we must abandon our state of dominance and learn to live in harmony with other living beings. We must remove ourselves from our self-assigned position at the top of the pyramid and become a harmonious, integral part of the planet. The setting is a garden or a wood where the actors are perfectly integrated with the context: they wear elements that refer to the plant world and their transformation. The tones of the dialogue are reflexive and poetic, the live music gives a rarefied atmosphere where sounds blend perfectly with the noises already offered by the natural context.

 

Biographies

ANGELA PEPI (Grosseto, 1989)

Angela Peppi graduated as an actress at “Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia” in 2014. She has performed in several theater shows such as “La donna bambina” (2015) at Teatro Vascello, directed by Roberto Cavosi; “The Shape of Things” (2016) directed by Francesco Piotti at Teatro Brancaccio; My big gay italian wedding (2018) at The Actors Company Theatre in Los Angeles. In 2012 she starred as the main character in the music video “Elettrica” of the famous Italian band, Litfiba. Pepi continued her career on the big screen with her debut in the movie “Il viaggio” directed by Alfredo Arciero in 2017. She has been part of the cast of several independent film production; she played as well on a TV show called “Don Matteo”(2016) directed by Jan Maria Michelini and Bang Bang Baby (2020), directed by Michele Alhaique. 

 

ILARIA MARCELLI (Rome, 1989) 

Ilaria Marcelli graduated from the “Scuola del Teatro Azione” in 2009 and the “Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia” in 2012. She continues her training under teachers such as Ivana Chubbuck, Michael Margotta, Roberto Magnani and Andrea De Magistris. In theatre she has been directed, among others, by Giancarlo Fares in I Tradimenti degli Amanti (2009) and by David Warren in Our town (2012). She has taken part in TV commercials (Nutella, Ford Focus, Barilla) in the Radiodrammi of Rai 3 (2012) directed by Sergio Pierattini, and in the miniseries L’Amore ai Tempi del Precariato (2015) by Michele Bertini Malgarini. Among the short films, No Worries (2010) by Michele Vannucci and How to Save Your Darling (2016) by Leopoldo Caggiano; In cinema, she is one of the interpreters of the american film Windows On the World by Axel Öhman, presented at the Turin Film Festival 2017. 

 

MATTEO CASTELLINO (Rome, 1989)

Matteo Castellino graduated from the “Accademia Internazionale di Teatro” in Rome. He has since founded the QuinteAttive company, for which he is also an actor and as a part of which he participated in the adaptation and direction of the show The Masterpiece (Teatro India, Rome). Since 2010 he has acted in various shows with directors such as Corrado Veneziano (Accipicchia ci hanno rubato la lingua!, Teatro Quirino, Rome), Valentina Martino Ghiglia (Preparadise Sorry Now, Teatro Belli, Rome), Andrea Baracco (Le Mille e una Notte, Teatro Rossini , Pesaro) and Vincenzo Manna (Odyssey, Spazio Diamante, Rome). In 2017 he attended a documentary course at the Met Film School in London and later directed the documentary This Is Not a Typical Italian Family. In 2018 he worked in the production of the film My Kingdom, directed by Andres Arce Maldonado. live Performance Proposal.

 

BALE 

Luca Balestrieri (Bale) is a Roman musician and singer-songwriter. Luca graduated in jazz guitar IN 2017 and successively moved to Dublin where he joined the Irish folk band “The Boxty Lads”. From these crucial steps he began to cement the connection between Italian and Anglo-American music, which is supported by the pervasive Folk musical grafts. His first eight songs were produced in Italy with Francesco Arpino and Matteo Cantagalli (Galeffi’s brother). In 2020, he took part in the Sanremo Rock final together with his fellow guitarist and producer Marco Meccoli. His new music research presents electronic, gospel, soul, pop and “electro-gospel” influences.

 

ELEONORA RICCIO 

Eleonora is a fashion designer with several years of experience in the luxury industry, including both clothing and accessories. She got a honours master’s degree with a dissertation on the role of the color in the art history and fashion, from the very beginning to the present day. The project “Eleonora Riccio – Fashion, Ethics and Glamour” derives from the innate passion towards fashion, art and color of Eleonora. The high-quality production is directed to satisfy people wishing to wear fancy, valuable and environmentally friendly clothes. Eleonora’s creations are all made with certified woven fabrics and yarns dyed with all-natural pigments extracted from flowers, plants, roots and berries.

 

 

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Seven Ways to Ask for Forgiveness
Chiara Crupi & Luca Vonella (Teatro a Canone)

Concept

Throughout history flowers and plants have helped us communicate. Trees mark the beginnings and the endings of lives on this earth. Flowers accompany our goodbyes, our love, good wishes, and welcomes. We send love letters, farewell letters, and excuse letters with flowers. But it’s actually to flowers that we should ask for forgiveness. There was a time, an Eden, in which the vegetable and animal kingdoms – including human beings – were an indistinct reflection of the same nature. Have we forever traded this Eden for science and technology or is there a possible future in which the same scientific progress can bring back that reflection? Human beings have made many mistakes. Our past is marked by heavy steps that have altered the natural and environmental laws. We are now faced with the irreversible present. The future is a bell whose echo we hear and which awaits us, always a few steps away. Even if we are aware that fixing it will merely be a drop in the ocean, we must do it. Often awkwardly, but necessarily, we try to do it. How to ask for forgiveness? How to remedy the irreparable? 

The performance

The action takes place through some “stations” of the garden. A woman holding a mirror is looking for her lost reflected image. Will she find it? Her voice leads the audience on a journey through different locations in the garden that are also the stages of the scenic path: seemingly uninhabited places that come to life as the spectators walk by and mysterious characters start telling stories. Each story has as its protagonist – or witness – a tree or a plant creature. Through texts drawn from the literature of all times we hear stories of trees that have been witnesses and victims of our evil deeds, and of flowers and plants that have listened to our pain and saved our lives with their scents and and their fragrances. Stories that open a door to a mysterious world we don’t know. Will the mysterious woman reconstruct through these stories the reasons for her own misfortune? Surely she will look for a possible way to remedy it: each story ends with a ritual of forgiveness directed at plants and the delivery of a “fragment of meaning” to the spectators. In the end, the audience participates in a song composed of stories collected at different stages of the journey. The show is freely inspired by the story of E.T.A. Hoffmann The Adventures of the New Year’s Eve and is a traveling journey through the stations of a garden.

 

BIOGRAPHIES

 

Teatro Canone

TEATRO A CANONE is a research group and theatrical creation that works in a continuous balance and dialogue between experimentation and entertainment. It was founded in 2008 in Chivasso (Turin). The focus of the work consists of physical and vocal training according  to Theatre Anthropology principles, the practice of Indian classic dances (Kathakali and Odissi) and research about physical actions in relation with music. Simultaneously, the creation of performances makes the group to deal with scenic composition techniques. They participated in several international projects on the Third Theatre, showing performances, in festivals and occasions in Italy and above. In 2020 and 2022 the Teatro a Canone began a tour in Spain where it presented LA FINZIONE VERITIERA at the Corral Cervantes in Madrid and at the Almagro Festival. In 2022 he presented the performance FUGA DA MOZART at the International 4×4 Festival in Jendouba. The group consists of a core of four people working together: Luca Vonella, Anna Fantozzi, Lucio Barbati, Chiara Crupi.

https://www.teatroacanone.com

The pedagogical project – Vivarium

Seven ways to ask for forgiveness is the first step in the Trilogy of forgiveness. This work is part of a pedagogical process that started within a project of a permanent workshop organized by Teatro a Canone under the direction of Luca Vonella who grouped some students and young actors (between 18 and 30 years), in a group called Vivarium (nursery). Vivarium people deepen, in periodical meetings, the techniques of the actor and the physical and vocal training research of Teatro a Canone, also taking part in some performances of the “senior” group. Vivarium was born during the pandemic and it has shown willpower during this difficult time. The educational sessions are held in particular by Luca Vonella and Chiara Crupi with Professor Franco Rufini (dramaturg, writer and theatre scholar). 

 

Luca Vonella

Director, author and actor. After completing an apprenticeship at Scuola Ambulante di Teatro, he founded Teatro a Canone with other artists and became its director in 2011. He has been studying Kathakali since 2004 with Beppe Chierichetti and the Pocket Theatre (Bergamo) and with Kalamandalam K. M. John (in Kerala, India). As actor and director he participated to the session of the 2016 of ISTA (International School of Theatre Anthropology) by Eugenio Barba (2016). He has published, among other writings for the magazine “Teatro e Storia”, Una tradizione marginale; in Anni Settanta, teatro di gruppo, Italia, edited by Mirella Schino (tes vol. 41, Roma, Bulzoni, 2022).

 

Chiara Crupi

Director, author, documentary filmmaker. PhD in “Digital Technologies for Research in History, Theory and technique of theater and entertainment” – Univ. “La Sapienza” of Rome, Degree in Literature, she is Adjunct Professor of film editing and video editing for the Sapienza University of Rome; Adjunct Professor of the laboratory of video, photography, theater, dance for University of Roma Tre – Palladium Theatre Foundation (2022-2023). Her acrivities and research focus on the relationship between camera and body of performer/actor/dancer. For nine years she was part of the group Odin Teatret (Holstebro, Denmark), in their productions and archives, as a filmmaker. He founded “Digitale Purpurea – Video, Theatre & Multimedia”, as an independent director and filmmaker. She is a member of “Teatro a Canone”, directing with Luca Vonella the project Arterie – festival di teatro diffuso (Chivasso, Turin).