6/20/2024
Mattia Cason is the conceptual and artistic director of the “e” project, and is an anthropologist, dancer, actor, choreographer, director, performer.
Mattia Cason is the conceptual and artistic director of the “e” project, and is an anthropologist, dancer, actor, choreographer, director, performer. “e” will be part of the official programme of the European Capital of Culture 2025 Nova Gorica – Gorizia and is part of the Your Border is My Border project.
The new play, which will be part of the project, was inspired by a meeting between actors Mattia Cason and Alessandro Conte, graduates of the National Academy of Dramatic Arts Nico Pepe, and Muhammad 'Abd al-Mun'im, a publisher, writer, and poet from Aleppo, who was forced to leave Syria because of his views against the regime of Bashar al-Assad and is now a refugee in Slovenia. The play takes the name after his novel Ala Durūbi Awrūba (On the Road to Europe) describing his dramatic journey to Ljubljana via Turkey, Egea and the Balkans.
The project will start on Wednesday, 26 June, in Sankt Peter in Holz in Carinthia, Austria, and will run in 27 stages at 27 points along the border between Italy, Slovenia, Austria, and Croatia, ending on Friday, 30 August, in Trieste. The project's lead partner is the cultural association Vicino/lontano from Udine.
“The performance is based on the figure of Muhammad, who is "marginal", but his text is central to the real Europe we are looking for, which goes beyond the national. The idea is therefore to bring a play based on the marginal figure to locations defined as marginal, but only from the perspective of the old interpretation of a Europe of nations. But from the perspective of the new Europe, these locations are at the very heart of it and as such represent its pulsating core, Cason told at a press conference. He added that the aim of the project is to attract people to these places on the border, which become protagonist-places. That's why each of the 27 stages includes a walk where people will learn about the landscape and its history, includes a central performance, and in five places we will also have broader discussions about the borders, the foothills of Europe.
Born in Belluno (Italy), he holds a BA in Anthropology and Visual Studies (University of Siena), an MA in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology (University of Bologna) and an MA in Arabic and Amharic Language and Literature (University of Naples). He further studied acting at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Udine and dance at the Maslool School of Contemporary Dance in Tel Aviv. He danced with the Fresco and Inbal dance groups, as well as with various independent choreographers from Israel. In 2020, he moved to Istanbul to work with choreographer Işil Biçakçi, but the Covid-19 pandemic forced them to postpone the project. Since 2021, he has been a member of the En-Knap Group, with which he created his first dance piece Ethiopian Women/Le Ethiopiche (2022), for which he received the Scenario Award 2021. As an anthropologist with a passion for the European Union, he explores its images and seeks to share them through a prepositional templative body language.
