Press Kit - FTA

PRESS KIT
6 TH EDITION MAY 24 – JUNE 9, 2012
ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE,
REGARDING THE SON OF GOD THEATRE
MAY 31 + JUNE 2 + 3 + 4, 2012
ROMEO CASTELLUCCI
SOCIETAS RAFFAELLO SANZIO
CESENA
Press kits consist of material sent by the company that produces the show, original material and research conducted by
the festival team.

ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF
GOD
PRODUCED BY Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio
DIRECTED BY Romeo Castellucci
MUSIC Scott Gibbons
DIRECTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH Giacomo Strada
WITH Gianni Plazzi + Sergio Scarlatella AND Dario Boldrini + Vito Matera +
Silvano Voltolina
COPRODUCTION Theater der Welt 2010 + deSingel international arts campus
(Antwerp) + Théâtre National de Bretagne (Rennes) + The National Theatre
(Oslo) + Barbican London and SPILL Festival of Performance + Chekhov
International Theatre Festival (Moscow) + Holland Festival (Amsterdam) +
Athens Festival + GREC Festival de Barcelona + Festival d’Avignon +
International Theatre Festival DIALOG Wroclav + Belgrade International Theatre
Festival + spielzeit europa I Berliner Festspiele + Théâtre de la Ville (Paris) +
Romaeuropa Festival + Theatre festival SPIELART München + Le-Maillon
(Strasbourg / Scène Européenne) + Théâtre Auditorium de Poitiers + Peak
Performances @ Montclair State (USA)
PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH Place des Arts
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD 1

PRESS QUOTES
“Gianni Piazzi as the sobbing, guiltily ashamed father and Sergio Scarlatella as
the lovingly attentive son perform their roles with a devotion beyond the call of
duty.”
Michael Billington, The Guardian
« C'est une œuvre puissante, complexe, profondément dérangeante… (…) On
éprouve. On est éprouvé. On est mis à l’épreuve. Comme toujours avec
Castellucci. »
Amélie Héliot, Le Figaro, 21 juillet 2011
« Sa performance pour deux acteurs et une dizaine d’enfants s’inscrit dans la
lignée de Purgatorio, le deuxième volet de la trilogie Dante présentée il y a trois
ans. On y retrouve à la fois le thème du rapport entre un père et son fils, et une
atmosphère ultraréaliste, pas si fréquente dans l’univers de Castellucci, où
onirisme et images baroques occupent une large place. Sur le concept… est la
reconstitution tout aussi rigoureuse d’une heure de la vie d’un fils et de son père
incontinent. »
René Solis, Libération, 22 juillet 2011
« Un acte bouleversant d'amour et d'humanité. […] Le tout sous le regard proche
et lointain d'un Christ d'Antonello da Messina, dont la reproduction immense
couvre le mur du fond. Présence à la fois apaisante el inquiétante, hypnotisante…
C'est tout. C’est-à-dire rien. Et, cependant, c’est énorme. À la limite du
supportable. Non que le propos ou les images choquent par une vulgarité mal à
propos. Mais parce que, en à peine une heure, ce spectacle nous ramène à notre
condition d'hommes faits de chair et de matière, comme le fut le Christ sur la
croix, laissant échapper : « Mon père, pourquoi m'as-tu abandonné? »
Mais ici, c’est le père qui se sent abandonné par lui-même, par son corps qui ne
lui obéit plus, sur lequel il n'a plus de prise, humilié devant son fils alors que les
rôles naturels se sont renversés. L'adulte est devenu l'enfant. L’enfant se fait
adulte. […] Comme un miroir obscur, le spectacle renvoie chacun à la conscience
de ses limites, de sa fragilité, de son infinie finitude. À ses peurs et ses
expériences les plus intimes, ses croyances, sa foi en l'homme. En Dieu. »
Didier Méreuze, La Croix, 22 juillet 2011
« Le metteur en scène italien livre un spectacle beau et cru, sous le regard
mystérieux du fils de Dieu. […] Comme dans tous les spectacles de Castellucci,
chaque spectateur peut tirer un sens tout à fait personnel de cette polysémie. En
sortant de Sur le concept du visage du fils de Dieu, le regard du Christ d’Antonello
de Messine vous poursuit, en son mystère intact. »
Fabienne Darge, Le Monde, 23 juillet 2011
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD 2

INTERVIEW WITH ROMEO CASTELLUCCI
Onstage is Antonello da Messina’s painting Christ Blessing, with the massive
face dominating the set. Did you look for it or did it find you?
It found me. I knew his work, because I had studied Renaissance painting when I
was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. But more recently I was
leafing through an art book and I came upon that face. I felt that it was calling out
to me. I had the feeling that the face in the portrait was looking at me – more than
looking, actually. I was touched. It called many things into question.
You felt questioned by the humanity of the gaze or by its divinity?
Antonello de Messina’s Christ is the Saviour of the World, blessing mankind. For
this show, I cropped the image in order to remove the hand giving the benediction
so that the viewer’s focus would be on the character’s humanity. His face is a
reflection of the human condition, a mirror before us. The face is inscrutable,
complex. His expression is ambiguous, and we can’t grasp what the man is
thinking and feeling. Is it gentleness, grief, melancholy? But we can detect a slight
hint of a smile. In his portraits of Christ, Antonello de Messina was an ecce homo
(behold the man) specialist. Many of his paintings depict the Passion at the
moment when Pilate presents the bound and scourged Christ to the mocking
crowd. In the Renaissance tradition, the ecce homo Christ gazes at the person
viewing the painting. Antonello de Messina transported that gaze in his Christ
Saviour of the World – a derivative of the Christ Pantocrator paintings of Byzantine
church art. I am pursuing that pictorial tradition by using Christ’s gaze in order to
reach out to each spectator, for it is an individual look – the spectator looks and is
looked at. And that look creates a profound questioning, as it allows the spectator
to identify with the fate of the incontinent old man, who is right there onstage, in
the flesh.
To what extent is your theatre a meditation on the body?
Theatre is a physical art, and the body is always centre stage. But contrary to
appearances, it is the spectator’s body that is there on the stage. The real
spiritual and physical conflict occurs within the spectator. The actor is there to
create a mirror effect, to instigate an essential exchange. The spectator is a part
of the show via his body, for his brain is part of his body. The spectator is a
character and, more importantly, the fundamental character, for theatre is an
individual experience, an epiphany.
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD 3

Do you believe, like Beckett, that the suffering body is the foundation of
individual identity?
Modern theatre is the child of two men, Antonin Artaud and Samuel Beckett. Both
were concerned with the failure of language to communicate meaning. Artaud
freed the body, while Beckett’s use of language involves irony, in the philosophical
sense of the term. At the heart of Beckett’s plays lies a paralysis of the body and
the inability of language to deal with that paralysis.
Does your art aim for a certain re-enchantment?
I don’t know. I’m short-sighted, or perhaps blind, as regards my own theatre work.
It’s difficult for me to explain what I see. One thing is certain, and that is that I
summon ghosts. I am not a mystic and I don’t believe in magic, but I do believe in
ghosts. Western theatre is full of ghosts. It’s a haunted house full of ghosts, and
I’m here to wake them up. My task is to transport that ancient dimension into the
contemporary world. I don’t believe in the irrational, but I do acknowledge that
there is an obscure force that haunts theatre. The source of our theatre, Greek
tragedy, shows that obscure forces are the very pillars of Western beauty. We
must accept that shadow zone, work with it and work on it. We can’t shed light on
everything, for light always creates shadows.
By Paul LEFEBVRE
Translated by Neil KROETSCH
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD 4

A FEW WORDS ABOUT ROMEO CASTELLUCCI
Questions & Transformations
Founded in 1981 in Cesena in northern Italy by the painter and set designer
Romeo Castellucci, the musician Chiara Guidi and the theorist Claudia Castellucci,
Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio soon established an international reputation as one of
the most fascinating contemporary theatre companies, renowned for the aesthetic
radicalism and profound humanity of its plays. While inspired by classics of
Western culture (works by Aeschylus, Dante and Shakespeare), the theatre that
Romeo Castellucci and Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio produce follows the performance
philosophy of Antonin Artaud where, much more than the text, bodies – often
atypical – concentrate and condense meaning in a stage context of thunderous
soundtracks and intense imagery. High tech is combined with the age-old crafts of
dramatic art to create worlds that transpose reality through a series of
diffractions. Spectacular by nature, Castellucci’s theatre questions the world we
live in from an essentially humanist point of view.
His previous FTA presentations include Orestea (una commedia organica?) (1997),
Genesi. From the museum of sleep (1999) and Hey Girl! (2007). His major works
include Tragedia Endogonidia (2002-2004), an 11-episode cycle of tragic theatre
and his Dante trilogy La Divina Commedia – Inferno, Purgatorio e Paradiso. The first
part was presented at the Avignon Festival in 2008, where he was an associate
artist that year, and the trilogy was named by Le Monde newspaper as one of the
best cultural productions of the decade.
P.L.
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD 5

ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
It starts with this. I want to meet Jesus in His most extreme absence. There is no face of
Jesus. I can look at paintings and statues. I know of a thousand or more painters from
the past who spent half their time trying to reproduce the ineffable, almost invisible,
grimace of regret that would surface about His lips. And now ? Now there is no He. What
makes its way in me more than anything is the will: to put together the will and the face
of Jesus. I want to be before the face of Jesus, although what strikes me above all is the
first part of that phrase: I want.
Romeo Castellucci
Once again, Romeo Castellucci turns to an apical icon of the human history:
Jesus, with whom the time too confronts itself in most of the world. Here the
picture of Jesus starts from the Renaissance painting and particularly in the topic
moment of the Ecce Homo. In this precise instant, tradition states that Christ
looks the spectator into the eyes, with a powerful effect of dramatic involvement in
the questioning. In this calculated confusion of sights’ touching and crossing, the
Face of God’s Son becomes the picture of the man, of a man or even of the very
spectator. And so, in the performance, the sight of God becomes a sort of light
illuminating a series of human actions which can be good, evil, disgusting or
innocent. The performance doesn’t tell about Jesus, nor about the worship; it has
no content of social condemnation and it doesn’t want to be easily provocative. At
the same time, Romeo Castellucci keeps his distance from mysticism and
debunking because, in the end, it’s just the picture of a man. A man who is
exposed naked in front of other men; who, in turn, are exposed naked by that
man.
The performance, from its very title, imposes initials which synthesize the name
“Jesus” at the maximum degree; Jesus is a name that is so present for so many
millions of men on earth that it can become almost invisible because it is so
deeply implicit. It is present beyond the conscience and the science; beyond the
feeling and history; it is essentially and radically present, apart from one’s will. A
name, somehow, sustained by the groove of an experience of references that is
millenary.
“On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God” is a performance with
some of Socìetas’ theater’s fundamental ideas: religion not as a mystical or
theological manifestation, but as part of that stock of primary images and
practices the theater draws on. A vocabulary of diffuse symbols and signs which
can form the basis for multiple, contradictory and even embarrassing
relationships is launched at the spectator, who becomes the reagent of this
universe.
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD 6

PRESENTATION SOCÌETAS RAFFAELLO SANZIO
Romeo Castellucci (1960), Chiara Guidi (1960) and Claudia Castellucci (1958)
established Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio in 1981. They shared an idea of theatre
which was mainly focused on the visual, plastic and sound power of the scene
where, in the very first years, they played as well. Romeo Castellucci is author and
director; he attends to scenes, costumes and lights according to an unitary
principle of dramatic composition which also affects the graphics of their books
and programmes. Chiara Guidi, author and director of a music theatre, attended
to the dramatic rhythm and the vocalism of almost all performances of the
Socìetas; she is interested into an art to be shared with the children and, back to
the ‘90s, she started an Experimental School of Children Theatre. Claudia
Castellucci is teacher, decorator and author of dramatic and theoretic texts; she
started many cycles of free research schools based on gymnastics and
philosophy. She is interested in the relationships existing between art and its
spatial and local occupation. She attended to many exhibitions at the Comandini
Theatre, an old iron lathe turning school which became the headquarter of the
Socìetas back to 1989.
Socìetas has produced performances which have been staged all over the world, in
the main international theatres and festivals: Santa Sofia, 1986; La Discesa di
Inanna, 1989; Gilgamesh, 1990; Hamlet. The vehement exterior of the death of a
mollusc, 1992; Masoch. The triumphs of the theatre as passive power, guilt and defeat,
1993; in the same year: Hansel and Gretel, a performance for children, as well as
Buchettino, 1994 and Pelle d’Asino, 1998. Then, Orestea (an organic comedy?),
1995; Julius Caesar, 1997; Genesis, 1999; Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1999; and Il
Combattimento, upon the music by Claudio Monteverdi and Scott Gibbons.
The Tragedia Endogonidia, 2002-2004, is a cycle of performances taking their
names after the city where they were represented. It’s a huge summary of the
tragic, lived in the topicality and under the pressure exerted by the future. A long
journey through the main European cities which became the fires of the drama. A
plot of dumb matters, sharp and thick signs, faces and masks which led to the
extreme border of the colours’ and sounds’ spectrum.
Besides the performances, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio published works about the
theatre theory, among which: Il teatro della Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, dal teatro
iconoclasta al teatro della super-icona (Ubulibri, 1992); Rhetorica. Mene Tekel Peres
(Aldo Miguel Grompone, 2000); Uovo di bocca. scritti lirici e drammatici di Claudia
Castellucci (Bollati Boringhieri, 2000); Epopea della polvere, il teatro della Socìetas
Raffaello Sanzio 1992-1999 (Ubulibri, 2001); Les pélerins de la matière. Theorie et
praxis du théâtre, Ecrits de la Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (Les Solitaires Intempestifs,
2001); Romeo Castellucci, To Carthage then I came, exposition (Actes Sud, 2002);
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD 7

Epitaph (Ubulibri, 2003); Idioma, Clima, Crono, quaderni della Tragedia Endogonidia
(Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, 2004); The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio,
Routledge, London and New York, 2007.
Among the video production, we mention:
Diario Sperimentale della Scuola Infantile anno I di Chiara Guidi, Romeo Castellucci e
Stefano Meldolesi (1996, 58’); Diario Sperimentale della Scuola Infantile anno II di
Chiara Guidi e Romeo Castellucci (1997, 49’); Genesi, from the Museum of Sleep
(2000, 60’) di Cristiano Carloni e Stefano Franceschetti; Epitaph di Romeo
Castellucci (2000, 8’); Le Pélerin de la matière di Cristiano Carloni e Stefano
Franceschetti (2000, 45’); Ciclo Filmico della Tragedia Endogonidia, di Cristiano
Carloni e Stefano Franceschetti (2002-2004, 5 h. 25’), published in may 2007 by
Casa di Produzione Rarovideo within the collection Eccentriche Visioni; Inferno,
Purgatorio, Paradiso (2008, 190’), published by Arté e Compagnie des Indes.
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD 8

ROMEO CASTELLUCCI’S BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1960 in Cesena, Romeo Castellucci completed his scholastic career at
Cesena Agricultural Institute before going on to graduate in Set Design and
Painting from Bologna Academy of Fine Art. At twenty years old he debuted as a
theatrical producer and the following year (1981) founded Socìetas Raffaello
Sanzio together with Claudia Castellucci and Chiara Guidi. Throughout the early
1980s he divided his time between the theatre and painting.
Since then he has participated in the creation of numerous productions as writer,
producer and set, light, sound and costume designer. Famous in Italy and in many
other countries of the world as the creator of a new theatre founded on a totality
of the arts and aimed at integral perception, he has written numerous essays on
the theory of stagecraft, many of which recount his personal theatrical experience.
His productions propose dramatic lines which are not subject to the primacy of
literature and are thus highly complex and visually very rich. His aim is to develop
a language which is understandable throughout the world, as are the languages of
music, sculpture, painting and architecture.
Romeo Castellucci also wrote several books about dramaturgy, among which:
“Il teatro della Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio” (The theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio),
Ubulibri, Milan, 1992. “Epopea della Polvere”(Epic poetry of the dust), Ubulibri,
Milan, 2001. “Les Pélerins de la matière”, Les Solitaires Intempestifs, Besançon,
2001. “Epitaph”, Ubulibri, Milan, 2005. “The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio”,
Routledge, London and New York, 2007.
In 2005 Romeo Castellucci has been the director of the 37 th Biennale di Venezia,
Theatre Section, which he called Pompeii. The novel of the Ash, which was
characterised by a re-definition of the problem of representation; a reconsideration
of the role of the spectator and an opening towards the emerging
theatre forms and works that are not included in the traditional theatre frame.
In 2008 Romeo Castellucci has been appointed “Artiste Associé” of the 62° edition
of Festival d’Avignon. Here he presented the trilogy Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
freely inspired to the Divine Comedy by Dante.
In 2010 he started the new theatrical project: J. The project includes two phases:
On the Concept of the Face regarding the Son of God (Essen Theater der Welt, 15-07-
2010) and The Minister’s black Veil (Rome Romaeuropa Festival, 10-11-2011).
In 2010 Le Monde chose the Divina Commedia as the best performance of the
decade 2000-2010.
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD 9

AWARDS
1996 : Special UBU prize for the resistance following to the exclusion from
Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio of the public contributions for the experimental theater
by the Ministry for Tourism and Arts of the Republic of Italy
1997 : Masque to “Orestea, una commedia organica?” best foreign performance
of the year, Festival de théâtre des Amériques, Montréal, Québec
1998 : Ubu prize as best performance of the year : “Giulio Cesare”
1999 : Europe New Theatrical Realities’s prize to la Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio
2000 : Grand Prix de la critique (Paris)won for the scenogaphy of Genesi from the
museum of sleep assigned to Romeo Castellucci
2002 : Romeo Castellucci was bestowed with the title of “Chevalier dans l’ordre
des Arts et des Lettres” by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of France
2006 : Special UBU Prize to Romeo Castellucci for the Direction of the Biennale of
Venizia, section theatre with the program Pompei. Il romanzo della cenere
2010 : The trilogy Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, receives the nomination of Le
Monde as best theatre performance of decade 2000-2010
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD
10

THEATROGRAPHY DE LA SOCIETAS RAFFAELLO SANZIO
Orestea (una commedia organica?), 1995 (Festival de théâtre des Amériques
Giulio Cesare, 1997
in 1997)
Genesi. From the museum of sleep, 1999 (Festival de théâtre des Amériques
Tragedia Endogonidia, 2002-2005
in 1999)
Hey Girl!, 2006 (Festival TransAmériques in 2007)
Inferno, purgatorio e Paradiso, 2008
Madrigale appena narrabile, 2007
Storia contemporanea dell’Africa. Vol. III, 2008
Flatlandia, 2008
Night must fall, 2008
Homo turbae, 2009
L’ultima volta che vidi mio padre, 2009
Ingiuria, 2009
Il Regno profondo, 2009
Sul concetto di volto nel Figlio di Dio, 2010 (Festival TransAmériques in 2012)
Il velo nero del Pastore, 2011
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD
11

TOURING DATES
PREMIERES
July 15, 16, 17, 2010 On the Concept of the Face, regarding the Son of
God Vol. I TheaterderWelt, Essen, GERMANY
October 2, 2010 On the Concept of the Face, regarding the Son of
God Vol. II deSingel international arts campus,
Antwerp, BELGIUM
TOUR 2011 – 2012
April 14, 2011 The National Theatre, Oslo, Norway
April 21, 22, 23, 2011 Barbican London and SPILL Festival of
Performance, UK
May 12, 13, 14, 2011 Festival d’Otono, Madrid, SPAIN
May, 28, 29, 30, 31 2011 Chekhov International Theatre Festival, Moscow,
RUSSIA
June 10, 11, 12, 2011 Holland Festival, Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS
June 22, 23, 24, 25, 2011 Athens Festival, Athens, GREECE
July 7, 8, 9, 2011 GREC 2011 Festival de Barcelona, Barcelona,
SPAIN
From July 20 to 23, 25, 26, 2011 Festival d’Avignon, Avignon, FRANCE
September 3, 4, 2011 Zuercher Theater Spektakel, Zurigo,
SWITZERLAND
October 8, 9, 2011 International Theatre Festival DIALOG, Wroclav,
POLAND
October 13, 2011 La Biennale di Venezia, Venezia, ITALY
From October 20 to 30, 2011 Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, FRANCE
From November 2 to 6, 2011 Le Centquatre, Paris, FRANCE
November 10, 11, 12, 2011 Théâtre National de Bretagne, Rennes, FRANCE
November 25, 26, 2011 Theatre festival SPIELART München
(Spielmotor München e.V.), GERMANY
November 29, 30 2011 La Rose des Vents, Villeneuve d’asq, FRANCE
From January 24 to 28, 2012 Teatro Franco Parenti, Milano, IT
From February 1 to 4 2012 deSingel international arts campus, Antwerp,
BELGIUM
February 7, 2012 Chassé Theater, Breda, NETHERLANDS
February 17, 18, 2012 ERT, Teatro Testoni, Casalecchio di Reno, ITALY
March 5, 6, 2012 Hebbel Theater, Berlino, GERMANY
From May 31 to June 3 2012 Théâtre Jean-Duceppe, Festival
TransAmériques, Montréal, Quebec, CANADA
October 6, 7, 2012 Sirenos International Theatre Festival, Vilnius,
LITHUANIA
October 10, 2012 Visual and Performing Arts Centre, Minsk,
BELARUS
November 14, 15, 2012 Le-Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg, FRANCE
November 20, 21, 2012 TAP - Théâtre Auditorium de Poitiers, FRANCE
November 24, 25, 2012 Palais des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, BELGIUM
PRESS KIT ON THE CONCEPT OF THE FACE, REGARDING THE SON OF GOD
12