freely inspired by the Collodi’s “Adventurs of Pinocchio”
Galleria Toledo, Napoli 19-20th of june 2013
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production Associazione Retroscena
coproduction E45 – Napoli Fringe Festival
direction and interpretation, Michele Cremaschi
set design, Silvio Motta
costumes, Elisabetta Cosseddu
photos, Marco Riva
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with the support of:
- “Software Architecture Lab” research laboratory at Milano-Bicocca University’s Information and Systems Sciences and Communication Department (DISCo) – scientific consulence
- Libera Accademia di Belle Arti di Brescia
- Fondazione Cariplo
- Associazione ETRE
- Parco dei Colli di Bergamo
Promo
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Augmented Pinocchio is a performance of a new genre we call “Augmented Comedy”. Ironic body language – visual comedy – a tale told also by other, more ethereal bodies, digital representations that are just as present in space as the bodies in the real world, which without requiring physical support for their projection “augment” the perception of the scene. The story’s characters can be portrayed in one scene by the actor, by the actor’s hologram in another, through an unprecedented operation for the theater: the virtual body is able to act and react with the actor in flesh and blood and enables a real, not simulated interactivity, granting a freshness to the stage and set that ushers the spectator into a magic illusory dimension. Modern videogame technology permits bodily movements to be plotted in real time; specific software adjusts and positions the virtual sets and characters, placing a powerful tool at the service of story-telling, and not just technological performance for its own sake.
The old pepper ghost theatrical trick was first developed at the start of the 1900 to make actors appear and disappear from the stage as if by magic. Overhauled and improved by avant-garde multimedia materials and systems, the stage is bare and the technology behind it is nowhere to be seen. The effect is purely for the audience, and the appearance of objects, bodies, and sets onstage takes place through a game of truth and illusion in which the line between the two is very fine indeed.
The setting is also linked to the world of paper, story-telling material par excellence, the book of Pinocchio, which becomes the common denominator in the project’s aesthetic definition. The world is generated by Geppetto, the creator who draws the story’s events and gives life to the pieces of paper/raw material that form his clothing; as the plot thickens, the forms of paper begin gaining dominance over the human dimension, to the point of revealing the essence of the initiation the puppet Pinocchio must receive before he can dash freely through the world and regain his body in flesh and bone.
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Theater Festivals
- june 2013, E45 Naples Fringe Festival, Italy
- nov 2013, Teatro e Nuove tecnologie, Bergamo, Italy
- feb 2014, Wonderland Festival, Brescia, Italy
- march 2014, QuestFest, Washington DC, USa
- april 2014, Ruutia! International dance festival for children and young audiences; Helsinki, Finland
- september 2014, FIT – Festival Internacional de Teatre Infantil i juvenil, Cerdayola, Spain
- october 2014, ANIMO puppet festival, Kwidzyn, Poland
- january 2015, Festival Internazionale di Teatro Arte e Nuove Tecnologie Le Meraviglie del Possibile//Scene Open Source – Cagliari, Italy