In terms of themes, ideals and mode of creation, ‘La lingua virale’ - a new production of the Teatro Stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia with the support of the Regione FVG, staged at the Sala Bartoli from 23 to 25 November - is closely linked to the principles of GO!2025, to the utopia of borders that are places of exchange and evolution and not of closure and immobility. At the heart of the exhibition is the text composed by Diego Marani as the winner of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Literary Prize ‘Il racconto dei luoghi e del tempo’ 2024, promoted by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region with Fondazione Pordenonelegge.
A workshop for young actors was built around his text ‘La lingua virale’, which the director Paolo Valerio decided to entrust to Silvia Mercuriali, an international artist who lives in London and has worked all over the world, from the Brisbane Powerhouse (Australia), to the Kochi Art Museum (Japan), to the Heritage Fund (United States), in addition to many commissions in the United Kingdom. The particularity of the text is that it is written in Europanto, an idiom made up of a collection of all the European languages that Diego Marani devised as a provocation against the fundamentalism of those who preach the ‘purity’ of languages: Marani instead invites us to see languages as instruments of identity that are constantly changing and subject to contamination, without clear and impassable borders. After the workshop experience, the group of artists staged ‘La lingua virale’, a very special performance because it follows the method - created by Silvia Mercuriali - of self-theatre.
‘Autotheatre is a theatrical staging strategy that places the spectator at the centre of the narrative,’ explains the director. ‘By following a set of precise instructions, the spectator becomes an actor and discovers his role within the story by simply letting himself be guided. I developed this strategy in 2007 driven by the desire to stage a real humanity, without the mask of an actor.
