Misericordia MITEM 16

Emma Dante – actor, playwright, theatre and opera director – creates theatre that investigates the depths of the human condition. The body plays a central role in her work, through which she lays bare the tensions and madness of people. She has participated in the MITEM Festival in 2015 with Verso Medea, performed by her company Sud Costa occidentale, which she founded in 1999 in Palermo, her hometown. This year she arrives to our festival with the performance Misericordia, a new production of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan.

Three women, Bettina, Nuzza and Anna, raise a disabled child, Arturo – who they have taken under their wings – in their pitiful little shack from where they go out every night to sell their bodies. They have a difficult life in which every ordinary gesture is like a battle. Their emotions move on a wide scale from shouting to laughter, from tenderness to anger. Although they love each other and Arturo, the child is growing, and the fragile harmony that results from the women's imbalance sometimes seems insufficient... Combining subtlety with brutality, humour with seriousness, Emma Dante explores the theme of motherhood in her staging. This is a story of an underprivileged, unconventional family that is held together by misery (miseria) and heart (corde): Misericordia. on an almost completely bare stage, the performance gives us a portrait of three women whose fierce words respond to Arturo's silence. The deaf and mute boy is played by Simone Zambelli, a dancer. The staging pays tribute to women and mothers. “The three women are – for me – three Parcae, mythological creatures who can work miracles through love and tolerance.”