The figure of Cassandra as “metaphor of that unheard voice, of that inability to get with open ears to hear and understand what the consequences of wicked actions will be like wars, yesterday and today”. Gaia Aprea, an actress of undisputed talent and charisma, thus outlines the character at the center of the monologue “The War unveiled by Cassandra – Aletheia”. The Roman actress gives body and voice to a Cassandra who, in the words of the young Palermo playwright Salvatore Ventura and directed by Alessio Pizzach, materializes in a flow of consciousness “poised between the unfinished present and the consciousness of the past that teaches nothing”. The show, which will debut in the national premiere tonight (and will replicate tomorrow) at the Mythos Troina Festival, artistic direction of Luigi Tabita, is a production of terrestrial nourishments and closed garden/vertical horizons together with the festival.
The power of the word of the young Ventura, the visionary force of the direction of Pizzach, to make the myth of Cassandra resonate, through gestures and images, “a magnifying glass to look for light in the dark times. Cassandra places himself in dialogue with the audience of the present, he wants to shake him from silence for a truth that can oppose the dominant thought », explains the director. Of this contemporary Cassandra, witness of an eternal destiny of violence that in the eras binds and winners, instead Gaia Aprea speaks to us.
How was this project born?
“It is the result of multiple encounters and synergies: with Luigi Tabita, director of the Mythos Festival, and Alessio Pizzach wanted to create a new show, a text that had strong affinities with Sicily, looked at the myth and his multiple possibilities, then came the production of terrestrial nutritions by Maurizio Puglisi and this surprising text that resumes the myth of Cassandra, in an eternal comparison between yesterday and today. I have already played Cassandra in the Orestea, a fascinating character but as immobilized by his curse: to know the truth and not to be believed. On this we wanted to work ».
What the questions you wanted to answer. So: who is your Cassandra?
«It is nothing more than the rumor that each of us has within himself a moment before something irreparable happens, we know what the consequences of those acts will be, but we perform them the same. We want to offer a clear and contrary position compared to war. This is the most political text that I worked, in the sense that it is a speech aimed at Polis, to the community to which I try to say that all the wars are based on a lie, starting with the Trojan war. The reason for the dispute is always other than what is shown and we pretend to look at but in reality we turn on the other side ». The Trojan war to reflect on our days: “It is the archetype of all wars, its disastrous consequences, of the destruction of a people”.
An intense monologue, how to have built it?
«Everything is told through the eyes of a woman who filters what she also sees through a female gaze that brings with her a dimension of hope. From text, the character of Enea was also present, a presence absence in the narration of Cassandra who represents the ability to be reborn, going to Rome and founding a new lineage ».
Music by Dario Arcidiacono, Andrea Montagnani’s video contributions, the voice of Aeneas is by Tommaso Garrè, the body of Aeneas is by Giovanni Boni.