Felliniana

Premiere: MALTA FESTIVAL (PL) – JUN 2010
On tour:  2010 – 2020

Cast and Crew: 12/13 people on tour (9 actors)
Running time: approx. 60 mins
Venue: This show is suitable for large open spaces and historic locations. Frontal stage.
Language: NO TEXT >> non-verbal show
Techniques: Physical theatre / Dance / Machinery and large moving objects
Audience: Best suited to approx. 2,000 people. It can host an audience of up to 3,000.
Target: Any age bracket. Suitable to an international audience.
Miscellaneous: Use of pyrotechnics and water effects.

Directed by: Margò Paciotti
Intellectual property rights: ONDADURTO TEATRO / Lorenzo Pasquali and Margò Paciotti
Cast: Chiara Becchimanzi, Lucia Bianchi, Giorgia Conteduca, Daniele Ginnetti, Valerio Marinaro, Giorgia Marras, Lorenzo Pasquali, Dario Vandelli, Giulia Vanni.

Machinery: Lorenzo Pasquali and Massimo Carsetti

Music: Original music from Stefano Saletti plus recognizable melodies by Nino Rota
Light Design: Costel Iulian Prodran
Videos: Cristian Paraskevas

International Consultancy: Ute Classen Kulturmanagement – Germany

“…It’s almost as if I can hear the voice of my old producer: ‘but how can it end like this?…without a shred of hope, a ray of sunshine…give me at least a ray of sunshine!’… a ray of sunshine… well, I don’t know…Let’s see…”

The show starts with two characters who will guide us into the heart of the story: one seems to be Gelsomina, the poetic creature born from Fellini’s imagination; and the other, a magical guide who leads us into this world. This guide can jump three meters high, do aerial tricks and has the ability to move everything that surrounds him. These two lead us by the hand into this fantastic world where everything will be made possible… Gelsomina falls asleep… and the dream begins.

A bench, a streetlamp, some clothes hanging up: the story begin. Merry plastic characters in the carousel of the surreal world of Cinecittà.

Sylvia calls out “Marcello, Marcello…” in her splendid foreign accent. She arrives in a sidecar from the Second World War.

The Trevi fountain transformed into a 1950s version with tritons, nymphs and cupids equipped with buckets and watering cans full of water.
An Empire-style bathtub is positioned in the centre. Sylvia gets in. One thousand litres of water is thrown on top of her until she runs away terrified, defeated and soaked from head to toe.

Then, alluring and seductive, yet with a melancholy aftertaste, Fellini’s women emerge from the twilight, smiling with rapacious mockery at the misery of life.

And then an enormous skirt appears with a bishop on top of it, who is dwarfed by the scale of his costume.

Nuns emerge from beneath the skirt, twirling grotesquely, and the scene is slowly transformed into a circus act with an animal tamer and his wild beasts.

Suddenly, the atmosphere changes and the various parts of the scenery reassemble themselves to take the form of an enormous ship, with fireworks in the sky and a cascade of sparks falling from the edge of the prow. Women dressed in white and men in tails take part in a sweet, timeless waltz. All the characters of our journey get on board…the light slowly disappears…the wind blows… this is the end.

But the audience is left with a great power – the power of imagination.
For those who have imagination can live a thousand lives.

VIDEO IMAGES AND GRAPHICS:
This show features the extensive use of video, where images are projected onto the bodies of the actors, onto surrounding buildings and onto moving video screens.
Video projection, therefore, becomes an integral part of the piece: the screen used is not a stationary background, rather a changing and ever-moving “screen” creating dynamic projected scenes.
The images are echoes of fantastical worlds that merge with the machinery and scenery on stage.
Collaboration with the video-maker, Cristian Paraskevas, led to the design of evocative images and the development of a multimedia language.
A language composed of multiple, carefully balanced levels, which captivates the audience.

MACHINERY:
The use of machinery in Felliniana follows on from and continues to develop the research carried out by Ondadurto in its previous performances.
The scenery is manipulated by the performers, who become both manipulators and actors/dancers at the same time.
The mechanical structures are designed to present the basic outline of various shapes and forms that are essential to the story-telling of the show, presenting the audience with a general impression and allowing their imagination to fill in the blanks. What makes these structures unique is their ability to transform…before the very eyes of the spectator. The show includes: a large unicycle, an old chugging sidecar, a gigantic skirt that turns into a cage, video screens in movement, a ship, a mechanical moon, towers on wheels and an enormous camera.

SOUNDTRACK:
The soundtrack is a mixture of songs composed and arranged by Stefano Saletti especially for Felliniana and some unforgettable songs by Nino Rota.
Thus, the audience will dive into an Italian midsummer night’s dream.

THE PERFORMANCE CAN BE PRECEDED BY:
Felliniana Appearances: many characters from the great director’s films pop up somewhere in the city centre.
Felliniana Parade:  a circus, a caravan, surreal characters who meet up and march through the city… a site-specific parade that makes use of the buildings and sites in the city.

Il Messaggero – Italy
(“A brilliant and evocative tribute…”)

Saarbrücker Zeitung – Germany
(“This nine-person theatre company checks all the boxes of street theatre, combining drama with dance, acrobatics and video projections, and on top of all that adds revolving and multi-story stage platforms that transform into ever-changing scenery.”)

Gazeta – Poland
(“…the show combines different theatrical genres and uses several artistic languages, such as dance, physical theatre and acrobatics [ … ] what the audience can see on stage is a miscellany of ideas and artistic inventions [ … ] a unique atmosphere is created that is worthy of the magic of Fellini …”)

La Nuova Sardegna – Italy
(“… the show is a timeless, dreamlike journey…”)

Online Review – Italy 
(“… a show that leaves the audience speechless, and not only due to the pyrotechnics and aquatic effects…”)

Canarias 7 – Canary Islands
(“It’s the story of a dream using Fellini’s poetic and surreal imagery.”)

La Provincia – Canary Islands
(“… the show ‘gives a nod’ to Fellini’s most popular films […] using staging techniques where different languages of expression come together.”)

Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Santiago – Chile
(“… a colourful homage of the great Italian director Federico Fellini.”)

Online Review – Chile 
(“A crescendo of talent and musicality.”)

Nice-Matin – France
(“… this is Italy, as it was in Cinecittà studios. The same spirit, rainbow of emotions, and liveliness.”)