I was mad amidst the mad,
the mad were deeply mad, some of them very intelligent.
Some of my most beautiful friendships started there.
The mad are nice, not like the deranged, who are all out,
in the world. I met the deranged after,
when I was out!
Alda Merini
7 women, 7 actresses, 7 souls who, like the kabbalah 7, are an expression of globalness, universalness and perfect equilibrium, representing a completed and dynamic cycle.
Noting, as does Artaud, that theatre mustn’t be an imitation of life but rather a way of remaking life itself by passing courageously through the creative fire, becoming incarnate in anonymous characters and entering into a permanent dialogue with their theatre, which is life.
The characters live in an enclosed space, a non-place, an asylum where they have been dumped and marginalised because they’re seen as being in the way, too much in contact with their conscience and hence, despite their lack of culture and elderliness, dangerous.
A ritual merry-go-round of actions, sometimes playful and sometimes dramatic, that interweave into a kind of poetic jigsaw in which, together with the sweet, ferocious words of Alda Merini, there are also those of Shakespeare and Bertolt Brecht.
The director, Cora Herrendorf, was involved in the mental hospital deinstitutionalisation process in Ferrara psychiatric hospital at the end of the 70s – a process that led to the Italian “Law 180”, one of the of the finest civil rights victories of the 20th century. The play, which is dedicated to that period, also aims to help counter current attempts in Italian society to call for a review of the law, thirty five years after it was passed.
7 Actresses:
Carla Giovannini, Clelia Mangolini, Germana Benini,Grazia Nagliati, Loreta Prampolini, Roberta Scanavini, Silvana Valesani
Direction and scripting:
Cora Herrendorf (the number 8)