«Lisistrata is perhaps the greatest example of an intelligent character. Only Shakespeare managed to write very intelligent characters but generally they were devoted to evil. And when it is true intelligence, it is always dialectic, and the real dialectical attitude is already peace ». Serena Sinigaglia approached abstractly to the Lisistrata. Aware of the extreme topicality of the text, which Aristophanes inserts into a perfect comic mechanism.
It is a debut for the Milanese director at the Greek theater in Syracuse. The comedy signs, the third production of the 60th season of classic representations of the investigation in the ancient Cavea Foundation from Friday 13 June.
“It is a place that inspires awe – says the director -. When we started the rehearsals, I told the company that despite a thirty -year career, I worked everywhere, I feel a debutant. And then when you are surrounded by so much beauty you feel small and hopes that we are up to par, because true beauty pushes us to improve ourselves. The Greek theater of Syracuse is a pride because it is unique all over the world, they also envy it all over the world. There is all the disarming magnificence of classicism: we are talking about 5 thousand people arranged in an arena. And you find yourself in front of the polis. I believe there is no higher democratic principle rendered in architecture. And therefore it is frighteningly disarming and of great civilization ».
He asked for a timeless set -up
«An abstract set -up. Because in fact the war was then there and there is today. Lisistrata must invent something to make her finish. Let’s think about Ukraine, Gaza. Not to mention Sudan where there are hundreds of thousands of deaths a day. It would be nice to be able to place the great question of instinct for violence, to man war, in a precise era but it is not possible. Because there was no era that was not characterized by that propensity. As for the scenography, I asked Maria Spazzi to work on the elements of the female world therefore basically the weaving, the frame, present in the metaphor that Lisistrata makes a counterpoint to male bad governance. A large platform and large frames, very simple, very empty space. These threads that flood the stage, instead of being ordered as after a good texture, are totally disordered, because the bad governance has disordered them, of the knots that then determine the wars. The color is alive, of the passion of female dionisism both of the war. It looks like a red, it is not exactly a red, but it recalls it with more elegance ».
Lisistrata prohibits sex to stop the war
«Lisistrata manages to invent a paradox that is very comic: if for fun I thought that the women of Gaza and the women of Israel, the Palestinian women and the Israeli women united all, preventing sex (to stop the war). Let’s say an important thing: the sexuality of which Aristophanes speaks is not vulgar, is the vital physical manifestation of love: that vision of secular love whose riot is a resolved, happy sexuality, which is then in the end is peace. Lisistrata says that we must give up to love them until they decide to choose that love. So it is a message of an amazing power. Then if we think of feminicides, if we think of the relationships such complicated today, we realize that this assumption of 2500 years ago resounds strong, clear and urgent even today. If you get to love you can’t kill your children, you can’t kill your husbands, you can’t kill your wives, you can’t simply kill ».
The protagonist will be Lella Costa.
«Lella Costa is lysisty for me. In the sense that Lella is an actress who has the lightness and technical skills refined in a very long, grandiose career, to dominate the comedy. But he is also an artist who has always been independent, he is an artist who has chosen his path and who has succeeded even in years where he was even more difficult than today. He is a leader ».