SPECIAL EVENT
SUNDAY, AUGUST 24
9:30 PM | San Benedetto Complex
PITECUS
by ANTONIO REZZA and FLAVIA MASTRELLA
On the thirtieth anniversary of its debut, the Imaginaria Festival is proud to present PITECUS, the cult show by Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella.
An unmissable event, the only stop in Puglia to witness—or relive—a masterpiece that has shaped the history of contemporary theater.
Brilliant, irreverent, and inimitable: Rezza and Mastrella return to the stage with a work that continues to amaze, excite, and leave its mark, confirming their position as an absolute one-of-a-kind on the Italian theater scene.
“It’s a show that analyzes the relationship between man and his perversions: graduates, layabouts, young and desperate people looking for an opportunity to increase their pockets and fame, highly decorated moral figures who speculate on the misfortunes of others, old people in search of an identity that will help them kill time before time kills them, people who carry on a life that has become habitual, individuals who sell their bodies in exchange for purely material well-being, beings who travel to enrich their external and superficial cultural skills.”
PITECUS tells the stories of many characters, a coming and going of people living in a chaotic microcosm: shreds of reality follow one another without a common thread, sublime nastiness makes even delicate subjects comical and aggressive. There are no positive representations, everyone settles for less, everyone feels victimized, they work to hide, they buy feelings and dignity, they don’t love, they create dullness and disservice.
The characters are ugly physically and internally, they exude indifference through their pores, they sink into anonymity, but thanks to their narcissism, they are convinced they are original, contemporary, and, in the most blatant cases, avant-garde. They speak a mixed dialect, are very colorful, they move nervously, and, through their acting, they take on mythical and caricatural, almost cartoonish forms… PITECUS rails against the culture of drowsiness and creative quiescence.
Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella are one of the most radical and recognizable artistic duos in the Italian theater and performance scene.
Active since 1987, their joint work challenges traditional definitions of theater, visual art, and performance, giving rise to a unique, anarchic, and unclassifiable stage language.
Antonio Rezza, performer, author, and director, brings to the stage an explosive physicality, verbal and gestural, that disrupts linear narrative and transforms the body into an unstable and elusive expressive weapon. Flavia Mastrella, visual artist and sculptor, constructs the scenic environments—which she calls “sensitive environments”—in which Rezza acts, creating installations that become an integral part of the visual and conceptual dramaturgy.
Their partnership has produced cult shows such as Pitecus, Bahamut, Fotofinish, Anelante, Fratto_X, and 7-14-21-28, all characterized by a non-narrative, ferocious, and surreal style, with a critical and irreverent perspective on society, identity, and communication. They also create videos, installations, and films (including Escoriandoli and Milano via Padova), which have received numerous awards.
In 2018, they received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Theatre Biennale, an award that cements their work as one of the most significant examples of contemporary Italian avant-garde. Their work defies all labels, embodying an idea of total art, free and profoundly political, capable of crossing and contaminating diverse languages and audiences.
