TENEBRA
Inside and open-space performance
Production: Teatro Nucleo
Duration: 50 min
“Heart of darkness is and must be read as the first and deep interpretation of imperialism […]. Moreover, it has to be intended also as a severe call for responsibility for the apathetic and cynic Westerner, the common man that gives up his own capacity of criticism, to become accomplice of the Empire in exchange of the promise of well being and tranquility.”
Sterminate quei bruti! (Exterminate all the brutes!),
Roberto Tumminelli, Selene Edizioni 2005
We recognize ourselves in Conrad’s pages, we recognize our opulence. We recognize it now, maybe more, that our solid borders see swarms of people that crave to have jobs that we (Europeans) by now despise. People that often come to sell us door to door, at the bars, at the bus stops, the same junk with which a little more than a century ago we bought tons of ivory from them.
Nowadays ivory it is not the word anymore, the name is petrol, coltan, fruit, monoculture. The goods of exchange have changed their names also, the beads become ten year contracts with illiterate peasants, promises of well being that they will never see.
We know this but we prefer fiddling with absurd extensions for our senses. Asylum seeker or economical migrant it matters little to us, the problem of the refugees is that they distract us from our fascinating recreations. We cannot bear to see them there, dirty and packed as livestock, on boats that barely float, ready to challenge death searching for salvation. They make us angry, they distract us, but for how long can our consciousness flee before it will be lost, utterly lost.
Kurtz could run away from Marlow. Marlow chased him for more than a century, finding him in the living room of a flat. Pity and anger are grafted in Conrad’s text, after more than a hundred years since its release on Blackwood Magazine. To whom are directed these emotions it is hard to say, after all nobody can declare himself innocent.
Technical schedule
Scenic space: 8×9 meters
Equipment: an electric plug of 220 V (load 2 kW), an electrical plug of 380 V/32A (load 7 kW) or an electrical plug of 380 V/ 63 A (load 9 kW)