Don Chisciotte

ALESSIO BONI    SERRA YILMAZ

in

DON CHISCIOTTE

liberamente ispirato to romanzo by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

adaptation di FRANCESCO NICCOLINI

dramaturgy diROBERTO ALDORASI, ALESSIO BONI, MARCELLO PRAYER, FRANCESCO NICCOLINI

with

MARCELLO PRAYER

FRANCESCO MEONI

PIETRO FAIELLA

LILIANA MASSARI

ELENA NICO

BIAGIO IACOVELLI (Ronzinante)

set design

MASSIMO TRONCANETTI

costumes

FRANCESCO ESPOSITO

lighting design

DAVIDE SCOGNAMIGLIO

music

FRANCESCO FORNI

production photos

GIANMARCO CHIEREGATO

ANDREA BONI

LUCIA DE LUISE

DAVIDE SCOGNAMIGLIO

directed by

ROBERTO ALDORASI – ALESSIO BONI – MARCELLO PRAYER

Lo spettacolo ha debuttato to Teatro Civico by Tortona on 22 January 2019.

Who is mad? Who is normal?

Perhaps those who live in their lucid madness can still perform heroic acts. More than that: perhaps some form of madness, even more than courage, is needed to perform heroic acts.

Lucid madness is what allows you to suspend, for an eternal instant, the sense of limits: that 'I know we must die' which strips everyday human life of meaning, yet is the only thing that makes us human.

Animals do not know they must die: at every instant they are either life or death. Humans know it, and at every instant are life and death together. Hamlet, a contemporary of Don Quixote, is emblematic of this when he asks: who would toil, suffer, work unworthily, witness the insolence of the powerful and the rewarding of the unworthy over the deserving, if the end is death anyway?

Don Quixote goes further: he transcends this awareness and fights for an ethical, heroic ideal – an ideal that gives value to every everyday gesture, and that, unintentionally, has made him immortal.

Is all this perhaps madness? Is it better to live with our heads down, within a context that precedes and shapes us, in a network of predetermined rules that in turn determine us? Those who over the centuries dared to break free of this network – through dreams, fantasy and imagination – were often considered 'mad', only to be rehabilitated by History itself. After all, it is precisely those mad enough to believe in their vision of the world, to go against the current, to turn the table over, who deserve to be remembered for ever: among others Galileo, Leonardo, Mozart, Che Guevara, Mandela, Mother Teresa, Steve Jobs and – why not – Don Quixote.

Alessio Boni

Quixotes and knights errant, scattered around the world or shut within walls, are always the same – those of the past, those of today and those of tomorrow, sane and mad, heroes and fools. They did not come into the world to live better or worse. When the universe, in its solitude, abandons itself to its miseries, they speak words of justice, love, beauty and knowledge. Whoever willingly becomes a slave does not curse existence.

Fernando Arrabal, Uno schiavo chiamato Cervantes

And I say that Don Quixote and Sancho came into the world so that Cervantes could tell their story and I could explain and comment on it – or rather, so that Cervantes could tell it and explain it, and I could comment on it.

Only someone infected by your same madness of not dying can tell, explain and comment on your life, my dear Don Quixote.

So intercede on my behalf, my lord and master, so that your Dulcinea del Toboso, now disenchanted by Sancho's lashes, may lead me by the hand to the immortality of name and fame. And if life is a dream, let me dream for ever!

Miguel de Unamuno, Vita di Don Chisciotte e Sancho

Photographs are free of publication rights for press use. Please always credit the photographers: ph. Gianmarco Chieregato, Lucia de Luise

DOWNLOAD THE PHOTOS

ALESSIO BONI    SERRA YILMAZ

in

DON CHISCIOTTE

liberamente ispirato to romanzo by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

adaptation di FRANCESCO NICCOLINI

dramaturgy diROBERTO ALDORASI, ALESSIO BONI, MARCELLO PRAYER, FRANCESCO NICCOLINI

with

MARCELLO PRAYER

FRANCESCO MEONI

PIETRO FAIELLA

LILIANA MASSARI

ELENA NICO

NICOLÓ DIANA (Ronzinante)

set design

MASSIMO TRONCANETTI

costumes

FRANCESCO ESPOSITO

lighting design

DAVIDE SCOGNAMIGLIO

music

FRANCESCO FORNI

production photos

GIANMARCO CHIEREGATO

ANDREA BONI

LUCIA DE LUISE

DAVIDE SCOGNAMIGLIO

directed by

ROBERTO ALDORASI – ALESSIO BONI – MARCELLO PRAYER

Lo spettacolo ha debuttato to Teatro Civico by Tortona on 22 January 2019.

Who is mad? Who is normal?

Perhaps those who live in their lucid madness can still perform heroic acts. More than that: perhaps some form of madness, even more than courage, is needed to perform heroic acts.

Lucid madness is what allows you to suspend, for an eternal instant, the sense of limits: that 'I know we must die' which strips everyday human life of meaning, yet is the only thing that makes us human.

Animals do not know they must die: at every instant they are either life or death. Humans know it, and at every instant are life and death together. Hamlet, a contemporary of Don Quixote, is emblematic of this when he asks: who would toil, suffer, work unworthily, witness the insolence of the powerful and the rewarding of the unworthy over the deserving, if the end is death anyway?

Don Quixote goes further: he transcends this awareness and fights for an ethical, heroic ideal – an ideal that gives value to every everyday gesture, and that, unintentionally, has made him immortal.

Is all this perhaps madness? Is it better to live with our heads down, within a context that precedes and shapes us, in a network of predetermined rules that in turn determine us? Those who over the centuries dared to break free of this network – through dreams, fantasy and imagination – were often considered 'mad', only to be rehabilitated by History itself. After all, it is precisely those mad enough to believe in their vision of the world, to go against the current, to turn the table over, who deserve to be remembered for ever: among others Galileo, Leonardo, Mozart, Che Guevara, Mandela, Mother Teresa, Steve Jobs and – why not – Don Quixote.

Alessio Boni

Quixotes and knights errant, scattered around the world or shut within walls, are always the same – those of the past, those of today and those of tomorrow, sane and mad, heroes and fools. They did not come into the world to live better or worse. When the universe, in its solitude, abandons itself to its miseries, they speak words of justice, love, beauty and knowledge. Whoever willingly becomes a slave does not curse existence.

Fernando Arrabal, Uno schiavo chiamato Cervantes

And I say that Don Quixote and Sancho came into the world so that Cervantes could tell their story and I could explain and comment on it – or rather, so that Cervantes could tell it and explain it, and I could comment on it.

Only someone infected by your same madness of not dying can tell, explain and comment on your life, my dear Don Quixote.

So intercede on my behalf, my lord and master, so that your Dulcinea del Toboso, now disenchanted by Sancho's lashes, may lead me by the hand to the immortality of name and fame. And if life is a dream, let me dream for ever!

Miguel de Unamuno, Vita di Don Chisciotte e Sancho

Photographs are free of publication rights for press use. Please always credit the photographers: ph. Gianmarco Chieregato, Lucia de Luise

DOWNLOAD THE PHOTOS

ALESSIO BONI    SERRA YILMAZ

in

DON CHISCIOTTE

liberamente ispirato to romanzo by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

adaptation di FRANCESCO NICCOLINI

dramaturgy diROBERTO ALDORASI, ALESSIO BONI, MARCELLO PRAYER, FRANCESCO NICCOLINI

with

MARCELLO PRAYER

FRANCESCO MEONI

PIETRO FAIELLA

LILIANA MASSARI

ELENA NICO

NICOLÓ DIANA (Ronzinante)

set design

MASSIMO TRONCANETTI

costumes

FRANCESCO ESPOSITO

lighting design

DAVIDE SCOGNAMIGLIO

music

FRANCESCO FORNI

directed by

ROBERTO ALDORASI – ALESSIO BONI – MARCELLO PRAYER

Lo spettacolo ha debuttato to Teatro Civico by Tortona on 22 January 2019.

Who is mad? Who is normal?

Perhaps those who live in their lucid madness can still perform heroic acts. More than that: perhaps some form of madness, even more than courage, is needed to perform heroic acts.

Lucid madness is what allows you to suspend, for an eternal instant, the sense of limits: that 'I know we must die' which strips everyday human life of meaning, yet is the only thing that makes us human.

Animals do not know they must die: at every instant they are either life or death. Humans know it, and at every instant are life and death together. Hamlet, a contemporary of Don Quixote, is emblematic of this when he asks: who would toil, suffer, work unworthily, witness the insolence of the powerful and the rewarding of the unworthy over the deserving, if the end is death anyway?

Don Quixote goes further: he transcends this awareness and fights for an ethical, heroic ideal – an ideal that gives value to every everyday gesture, and that, unintentionally, has made him immortal.

Is all this perhaps madness? Is it better to live with our heads down, within a context that precedes and shapes us, in a network of predetermined rules that in turn determine us? Those who over the centuries dared to break free of this network – through dreams, fantasy and imagination – were often considered 'mad', only to be rehabilitated by History itself. After all, it is precisely those mad enough to believe in their vision of the world, to go against the current, to turn the table over, who deserve to be remembered for ever: among others Galileo, Leonardo, Mozart, Che Guevara, Mandela, Mother Teresa, Steve Jobs and – why not – Don Quixote.

Alessio Boni

Quixotes and knights errant, scattered around the world or shut within walls, are always the same – those of the past, those of today and those of tomorrow, sane and mad, heroes and fools. They did not come into the world to live better or worse. When the universe, in its solitude, abandons itself to its miseries, they speak words of justice, love, beauty and knowledge. Whoever willingly becomes a slave does not curse existence.

Fernando Arrabal, Uno schiavo chiamato Cervantes

And I say that Don Quixote and Sancho came into the world so that Cervantes could tell their story and I could explain and comment on it – or rather, so that Cervantes could tell it and explain it, and I could comment on it.

Only someone infected by your same madness of not dying can tell, explain and comment on your life, my dear Don Quixote.

So intercede on my behalf, my lord and master, so that your Dulcinea del Toboso, now disenchanted by Sancho's lashes, may lead me by the hand to the immortality of name and fame. And if life is a dream, let me dream for ever!

Miguel de Unamuno, Vita di Don Chisciotte e Sancho

Photographs are free of publication rights for press use. Please always credit the photographers: ph. Gianmarco Chieregato, Lucia de Luise

DOWNLOAD THE PHOTOS