Naples becomes the privileged stage of the show that won the Ubu Award 2023 as the 'best new Italian text': 'Via del Popolo', written and performed by Saverio La Ruina, a multi-award winning Calabrian artist, who will be on stage at Sala Assoli from Friday 23 to Sunday 25 February at 8.30 pm on Friday and Saturday and at 6 pm on Sunday. Produced by Scena Verticale, the theatrical work features the lights of Dario De Luca, the setting by Giovanni Spina and the painting is by Riccardo De Leo. The story is set in a stretch of road in a southern town that once teemed with activity: it's a journey from the past to the present. Via del Popolo is also a reflection on time: 'time that runs but that we must not chase but spend'.
On Saturday 24 February at 6 pm, as part of 'Altre Visioni', a programming segment on the aesthetic and material relationships between stage and screen, curated by Angelo Curti, the film 'Polvere' with Saverio La Ruina and Roberta Mattei, directed by Antonio Romagnoli, is scheduled to be screened. Romagnoli's first work, based on La Ruina's homonymous theatrical text (Enriquez Award 2015, as best actor and best text; Lo Straniero Award 2015; Annibale Ruccello Award for Dramaturgy 2016), 'Polvere' is the story of a man and a woman and a path of slow and relentless violence and manipulation. The actor and screenwriter of the film Saverio La Ruina will be present. Admission is free until seats are exhausted.
'Via del Popolo' shines a light on two men who walk the same way: a man of the present and a man of the past. The first takes 2 minutes to travel 200 meters, the second 30. It's the small Italian town that has changed, it's the globalized society. Once there were two bars, three grocery stores, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a restaurant, a cinema. Shopping centers have taken over from the shops and the end of retail has taken away jobs, destroying a social model still based on personal relationships. 'To whom do you belong?' - the old villagers asked - 'Who do you belong to?'. And from your answer they derived the essential information about your identity. 'Via del Popolo' is the story of a belonging to a place, to a family, to a community. But those two hundred meters also represent a path of formation in which the foundations of future life are laid, from which emerges a poignant humanity, the relationship with fathers, the initiation to life, to politics, to love.
'Polvere' tries to investigate psychological violence, which sometimes hides behind a veil of normality and often covers the secrets and unsaid things of a sick relationship. He is a photographer, working on a report on the condition of Indian women, while She is a teacher recovering from a loss. At first the 'monster' is kept hidden. Then, slowly, it becomes subliminal manipulation until the dam breaks and possessiveness, jealousy, control mania emerge more and more disruptively. A hell in which he relentlessly sinks her.