Proserpina (Memory is a trap) • Appointments with Matteo Corradini
As part of the initiatives for Holocaust Remembrance Day, scrittorincittà proposes
PROSERPINA (Memory is a trap)
by and with Matteo Corradini and the extraordinary participation (in video) of Saba Poori
Tuesday, February 3, 6 pm (open to the public) • Wednesday, February 4, am 10 (schools only) • Monviso cinema (via XX Settembre 14, Cuneo)
Proserpina (Persephone in Greek mythology) is a young daughter of Ceres (Demeter) and Jupiter (Zeus). In myth, she is kidnapped and deceived by Pluto (Hades), god of the underworld. Freed, but not entirely, through a trick, she will only see light and happiness for a few months each year. She is the one who "split the year in two.".
Featuring the special participation of Saba Poori, a dissident Iranian dancer, the reading is a continuing attempt, at times ironic and profound, to tell Proserpina's story through words and the body, perhaps never succeeding, perhaps succeeding here and there. Indeed, too many stories are intertwined and dramatically resemble that myth, starting with the girls who were victims of the Holocaust, kidnapped in Nazi concentration camps and only occasionally surviving, brought back to life but imbued with the indelible memory of what happened, a memory that periodically drags them back into darkness. And then there are the girls who were victims of the Rwandan genocide, and further back in history, those of the Armenian genocide. All the way to the story of Iranian women today, so timely, the story of "Donna vita libertà.".
The reading continually asks whether memory itself is a trap. And what it means to connect something that has a lot of Memory with something that doesn't yet have Memory. It's a dialogue between the stories of several adolescent women in the Holocaust and beyond, told by Matteo Corradini and the voice and body of Saba Poori, who will tell her personal story as an Iranian girl. Together, the two voices merge and intertwine, to accompany Proserpina into a new spring. Because nothing blossoms unless it has first learned to disappear.
(Some short parts of the reading are in Farsi with Italian subtitles.)
How to participate
Two performances are planned, one open to the public and one reserved for schools:
Tuesday, February 3, 6, Monviso Cinema > Free, open to the public, reservation required. To reserve your spot, click here.
Wednesday , February 4, 10, Monviso Cinema > appointment reserved for schools (third grade of middle school and first, second, and third grade of high school), free, by reservation. Reservations can be made by calling 0171.444822 from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Tuesday to Friday, from January 14 to 23.
For information: info@scrittorincitta.it • 0171.444822
