From the novel “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury
Direction and Playwriting: Horacio Czertok
Music: Cora Herrendorf
Actresses/Actors: Teatro Nucleo
What do books say? They say nothing! Nothing that you can believe or teach. They talk about people who do not exist, the fruit of imagination. And if it’s not about fiction, it’s even worse. Conflicts between professors who call each other an idiot; philosophers screaming at each other’s throats; attempts to calculate, measure and close the Universe into equations, which, after all, cannot be, except by giving Man the feeling of his own smallness and bestiality and immense melancholy. That is why a book is a loaded gun in your neighbour’s house. Let’s burn it! Let’s make that weapon useless!
Ray Bradbury
FAHRENHEIT PPROJECT is inspired by Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, where it is told of a “technological” and thoughtless civilization that has banned the book since it was a voice for ideas and individual reflection, and in which the firefighters, now deprived of their traditional job as houses are built with fireproof materials, now have the task of identifying the volumes that still exist and burning them. Nevertheless, on the outskirts of the city there are resilient people who live on the edge of the city, who live a hard life, learning by heart each of them in order to make the culture survive…
It is an act able to involve an entire city, it foresees ROAD ACTIONS in the same way as the “invisible theatre” of the German theatre groups during the Weimar Republic.
It is a big operation of agit-prop theatre, enhanced by a particular care of the theatrical quality.
A theatre that works on the border, immersed in life, and intimately linked to the life of the citizens, but which never loses its poetry. With intimate moments of personal relationship, between character and spectator – comparisons between happiness boys, students and citizens, the story of the people of the book to one spectator at a time – group choreographies in the spaces of the city and moments of great spectacle, to underline the beginning or the end of an act. A work in three acts: the morning running up and down schools, the afternoon in the city, the evening in the square all together.
A theatre that combines research and work with non-professional spectators, breaking down fences of convenience: Theatre belongs to the citizens, it belongs to them, and joyfully it is taken over every time a well determined and competent group decides to do so.
A project each time recreated and produced, in agreement with the clients and with the historical and social characteristics of the city; modelled with the “forces” available: schools, radios, newspapers, music and theatre groups, individual artists, libraries, firemen.
“What is the meaning of books? Are they the memory of mankind, or just a useless, wasted paper? With the development of civilization – TVnet, computer games, videotapes – isn’t writing words superfluous? How would we live without Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Witkacy? What would the words LOVE, HAPPINESS, WELL without poetry mean? There are no pre-packaged answers. Everyone has to solve these problems by himself, create his own value system.
The Teatro Nucleo has put question marks on the future of all human cultural property, with its show Fahrenheit Project, and with it has given an opportunity to reflect on the contemporary. The places where the event takes place have no particular significance – they are accidental. It could happen in any place on earth at the end of the 20th century. The flag with the black symbol and the inscription Fahrenheit flies on the pole. All the time a voice yells at us to deliver the books. There is no place for written words in this society. (….) A fire truck arrives in the city throwing blue lights on the dirty facades of houses. It is dark now, it is raining. A small square is full of barriers. Car headlights illuminate part of the street. Scenes are flowing on the spectators’ faces. The guards point to a balcony on the second floor. From there they lead the red-haired woman away and throw hundreds of books out the window (….).
Paper burns; temperature: 451° Fahrenheit.
There is no applause, because this is not a play.
We remain standing, paralysed, with a large number of questions:
…. What will become of us? Where are we going?….
The flag waves on the pole, a challenge to mankind.
Blessed Krzyzanowska in “NA PREZELAJ” Poland – September 1986
Fahrenheit Project was produced and presented at :
- 1985
Orleans (F)
Mainz (D) - 1986
Grifow (PL)
Molina de Segura (ES) - 1987
Badajoz (ES)
Logroño (ES) - 1988
Ciudad Real (ES)
Valdepeñas (ES) - 1999
Ferrara (I) - 2001
Abbiategrasso (I) - 2008 Sassari (Coproduzione Theatre En Vol – Teatro Nucleo per il festival Girovagando)
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