by August Strindberg
direction and light disegn by Mattia Sebastian
Opening performances of the International Theatre Festival, Japan 2007
Toga Mura Arts Park, artistic director Tadashi Suzuki
Italy: Teatro Out Off November 2013
with
Benedetta Laurà
Mattia Sebastian
Alessio Mizzan
Maria Noemi Regalia
Italian version
Arianna Tyer
Eleonora Malliani
Giovanni Gioia
The bourgeois family and the imposed social status imposition
Director notes
The characters of this tragedy lived in separate worlds: speaking different languages, each of them live as in a dream, without any connection with others.
The mother, dressed in mourning as a Queen of operetta, sitting on large black sealed packs because of the seizure of their assets at the center of a red carpet, speaks, laughs, eats and cries. Gerda's husband, Axel, the mother's lover, wants to conquer the rocking chair's where the husband died, which is in his predatory view the sign of power, the throne. Gerda the little anorexic daughter, does not speak anymore. She use silence as a primary form of communication, she walk, like a gosht, on the bottom of the stage dragging a empty infante wheelchair, symbol of its sterility. His brother Friedrick is an alcoholist, he drink to warm up and to soothe coughs. He lives in a small cage like a monkey, eat the paper of his writings for hunger and play all the time with some matches in a bid to warm up, warm up a life that will end in burning house cleaner.
Elisa, a Medea grotesque and small-bourgeois, believed to be the a Pelican, the animal that gives his blood to feed her little. After psychologically had murdered her husband, she is now killing for cold and starve his two sons: the alcoholist Friedrick and the ill Gerda, with the husband of whom has a romantic relationship from a long time.
The first title of this tragedy was "the sleepwalkers", changed later in "The Pelikan", through which the author wants to bring out the unconsciousness of human being through the false values of bourgeois society; construct a family around an appearance of wealth, build on contraction of debts to maintain a welfare state. After the father's death, Elisa huseband, the family discovered her self drained of any link. The feelings lie in the abyssal depths of suffering.
The four protagonists of this tragedy are the same that collide in "Hamlet": the mother (Gerturde-Elisa), the son (Hamlet-Friedrick) the sister (Ophelia-Gerda) and the brother-in-law, the husband of the daughter (Axel-King Claudius), including also the ghost of Hamlet's father identified here with the rocking chair of Elisa's husband recently passed away. The dreams of each one of them disappear swallowed in a vicious circle that will bring the demands of this family to self-destruction.
Mattia Sebastian
Press:
Italian press il giorno IL PELLICANO
Japanese press GIAPPONE IL PELLICANO A TOGA