Lourdes

Emilia Verginelli

Lourdes is the story of an encounter, of several encounters. It is the tale of those who have been and those who have never been to Lourdes. There are those who imagine it, those who detest it, those who would have liked to go there to ask for a miracle. It is a conversation, a series of dialogues that occurred over time between me and several people, not in chronological order but in an order that moves from narration to memory, from memory to reflection to remain in the present of the stage play. Thus the temporal dimensions overlap, in connecting the paths of the past with those of the present. Tangible voices, genuine testimonies from which to start for a clinical observation of the “Lourdes” phenomenon. A search on the border between the self and the other person. The feeling is that of uncertainty, and at the same time it is a search for the impersonal. A scene-sharing, in which time is marked not only by the performers, but also by the audience itself, invited to inhabit the stage space at their own will and to interact with the numerous props.

Creation and production: Emilia Verginelli | On stage: Ale Rilletti, Alex Paniz | Dramaturgy collaboration: Sara de Simone | Sound designer Francesca Cuttica aka China Wow | Lighting design Camila Chiozza | Co-production Bluemotion/Angelo Mai and Santarcangelo Dei Teatri | In collaboration with Fondo per le creatività emergenti Santarcangelo Dei Teatri, Triennale Milano Teatro, Ert Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, Ravenna Teatro, Amat Marche, Fabbrica Europa, I Teatri Reggio Emilia, L’arboreto – Teatro Dimora, Teatro Pubblico Campano, Teatro Pubblico Pugliese, Centrale Fies, Teatro Stabile Dell’umbria, Operaestate Festival Veneto | Among the winners of the CURA 2022 Project, Elsinor Centro di Produzione Teatrale / Teatro Cantiere Florida (Florence), CROSS residence (Verbania, VB)

BIO

Emilia Verginelli is a performer and director originally from Rome, active in film and theater. In 2003, she created a permanent theater workshop within juvenile court facilities; she later founded the non-profit Gruppo Sorriso and collaborated with Opera Don Guanella. In 2010 she created fivizzano27, an independent cultural space located in the heart of Rome’s Pigneto neighborhood that was born from the desire to create a network of collaboration and sharing among different contemporary theatrical realities. Her productions question and stage relationships beyond roles, about fragility and care, starting from her own and others’ biographical experiences. Beginning with interviews and testimonies, she strives for a scenic language ‘more adherent to an intimate dialogue’ between the stage and the audience: a performative language that stems from the study on intimacy, that wants to be part of the collective experience of being together, to try to achieve an honesty of storytelling that does not impose a clear-cut, but a lateral direction.