“Terrae Motus / Motus Animae”, a show based on the testimonies of those who experienced the earthquake in central Italy
Saturday 26 October at the Teatro Caio Melisso

The performance was conceived and elaborated by Maria Anna Stella, born and raised in Norcia, at the C.U.T Theatrical University Centre of Perugia with whom she has been collaborating for six years now after graduating in Performative Theatre Techniques and Scenic Writing. The most interesting audio/video material collected by her in the area between 2016 and 2017 was subsequently dramaturgically developed during another year of work in order to create a unique performance. The results of her research and the testimonies collected in the form of a confession in months of activity on ‘internal seismicity’ have been assembled according to a very personal artistic path, making use of the dramaturgical advice of the artistic director of the C.U.T. Roberto Ruggieri.
These materials have merged to outline an anthology of confessions – a sort of Spoon River Anthology in free verse – elaborated almost in the form of an epitaph, concerning the lives of some residents of Norcia and surroundings, some of whom are now buried in the local cemetery. Those narrated by Maria Anna Stella are life stories of a microcosm lost in the Apennines and of a present time already eternally passed away. In her neat and gaudy performance, Maria Anna Stella managed to give back to the characters their own voices, with personal gestures and postures, without rants and pantomimes, according to a style that can bring to mind the storyteller technique of Dario Fo’s Mistero Buffo. The aim for her is also to free the theatre from the narrow confines of the representation of literary works so that it finds its social and spiritual usefulness by reconnecting to vital processes, to the truth of life in its flow, returning to being the place where reality itself is examined in its reality.