A deadly car crash seen through the eyes of the first eyewitness. An open story where the characters, the actors, the audience, get confounded.
Original Script MAURO ANDRIZZI and MARCUS LINDEEN
Translation, Concept, Direction GIULIO STASI
With JUN ICHIKAWA / CATERINA SILVA and with YOU
Premiered in Rome at Festival Teatri di Vetro 2013, presented at Festival Attraversamenti Multipli 2013 in Rome
Performers in previous editions ELENA CUCCI
ALESSANDRO PAESANO on TEATRO.ORG about ACCIDENTE 1
[…] Once again Stasi enthrals his audience by shifting their point of view from external to internal. The viewer is both witness and subject of the narrative in a constant shift between observed and observer. The woman as witness, the woman as the crash victim, the spectating audience, and the participating audience, are all implicated in the way perception is projected and overturned (this dynamic is helped by the actress catching and using details in the appearance of some audience members to describe the two characters involved in the crash). The elegance of Stasi's work lies in his ability to stage performative shows where the performance is never a substitute for the dramaturgy but enters into a synergy with it and contributes to the general yield of the story. […]
LAURA LANDOLFI on MYWORD.IT about ACCIDENTE 1
An interesting theatrical wave seems to be emerging from the shows by Giulio Stasi and Carrozzeria Orfeo, where image-based research is matched with more complex dramaturgy. […] Similar research, though with different results, is found in work by Giulio Stasi, in whose performance the so-called theater of images is combined with closer attention to the word. His performance, short but effective, lasts about 15 minutes; it is inspired by a car accident and takes place, it’s no coincidence, in a real garage in the Garbatella neighborhood […] Here, an actress tells of a crash that involved a couple, but as she goes on with the story we realize that the characters she’s describing are the spectators themselves. So the viewers become the protagonists of the tale, while the actor becomes spectator and witness to the accident, in a kind of spatial reversal.
SIMONE NEBBIA on I QUADERNI DEL TEATRO DI ROMA about ACCIDENTES 1, 5 and 6
It may be true, it may be so, that when faced with the danger of our own or someone else’s death we feel the pulse of life even more deeply. Giulio Stasi, an artist known as an actor and director, seems to have a concrete awareness of this; together with his company, Rosabella Teatro, he has created a series of “Accidentes Gloriosos” dealing with death, which obviously means talking about life. Three of these “Accidentes”, staged at Teatri di Vetro 7, were among the most interesting projects of the entire festival [...]. An accident, an incident, an incisive show about the life remaining to us; we leave the performance trying to swallow what we chew on raw.
SERGIO LO GATTO on TEATROECRITICA about ACCIDENTES 1, 5 and 6
Shooting death, shooting life. – We get out safe, or almost safe, from our three stops in this terrifying emotional amusement park and it is difficult to know what we could or should say about it. Victims of an accident only remember the deafening sound and the sight of all eyes staring at them. Perhaps it is in this declination of death that the three Accidentes embrace each other, in an accurate montage of a life ebbing away, consigning itself to the memory of those who remain, to the memory of that death scene, one last impression of light. […] Giulio Stasi’s work is a slow and courageous journey towards the articulation of a language. He takes the huge risk of totally penetrating the great distance between very strong dramaturgical material and subtle staging: a risk assumed with the responsibility of making a violent impact on defenseless spectators, but done with the keen grace of research, the elegance of simplicity, and renouncing any winking shortcuts from the get-go. Within the triangle of gazes (performer, spectator, playback of the gaze); within the human body represented by a bicycle; in the distant but wrenching narration of that head-on collision: within all this there is a sense of real emotions that are never purely emotional but always, always, always critical states of being. And all too often this urgency is underestimated.
DANIELE RIZZO on PERSINSALA.IT about ACCIDENTE 1
[...] This Glorious Accident is the powerful demonstration of how the use of simple language combined with a linear style and an essential brevity can be artistically effective. An experience, so engaging as stunning, that we recommend to everyone [...]
NICOLA SPANO on W.I.P / TdV 7 in collaboration with NUCLEO ART-ZINE about ACCIDENTE 1
[...] I, really, me, “a guy in a blue t-shirt”, am already dead. He looks straight into my eyes when he tells me this. The artist’s intention to confuse us, to make us identify completely with the experience of a real car accident, and its consequences, comes across completely. [...] Luckily this is not the case for the girl sitting next to me. Curly haired, in a leather coat, she is still breathing and looking out the window at our spectator, as if she could see herself through the woman’s eyes. It is in mirroring her thoughts that Elena Cucci gives the best of herself. [...]
