The Shit/La Merda

Cristian Ceresoli

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781849434102
• eBook ISBN: 9781849437141
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Performance Art
• Index: Literature

You have to laugh. It is a tragedy in three movements: The Thighs, The Dick, The Fame and a counter-movement: Italy. An actress creates a physical and vocal mask challenging a provocative, scandalous and beastly text. Words might be sung, howled and shrieked but a chant never emerges. In her naked physicality she tells a personal story in an unbroken flow of thoughts/words rendered as sounds and movement. The deafening screams being choked. Appeased. Imploded. This female onstage offers herself up in a feast, ready to be torn apart by anyone. A poetic piece born of the flesh that returns to the flesh, captured in a tightly-sealed aesthetic. Applause required. The Shit is driven by a desperate attempt to pull ourselves out of the mud, the latest products of the cultural genocide aptly described by Pasolini since the modern consumer society began taking form. A totalitarianism, according to Pasolini, even more repressive than the one of the Fascist era, because it's capable of crushing us softly. Si deve ridere. E' una tragedia in tre tempi: Le Cosce, Il Cazzo, La Fama e un controtempo: L'Italia. Nella sua nudità e intimità pubblica, l'attrice costruisce una maschera fisica/vocale sfidando un testo scandaloso, provocatorio e rabbioso. La scrittura è cantabile, ma il canto non emerge mai, ed è invece preponderante la chiave dell'invettiva, del grido, del corpo che sussulta la sua storia personale in un flusso di pensieri/parole raccontati come suoni. Strazianti. Urla assordanti e contratte. Sopite. Implose. La femmina si offre dal vivo come in un banchetto, pronta a venire sbranata da tutti. Una partitura poetica che nasce così dalla carne e alla carne ritorna, pur dentro a una rigidissima confezione estetica. Applausi obbligatori. La Merda ha come spinta propulsiva il disperato tentativo di districarsi da un pantano o fango, ultimi prodotti di quel genocidio culturale di cui scrisse e parlò Pier Paolo Pasolini all'affacciarsi della società dei consumi. Quel totalitarismo, secondo Pasolini, ancor più duro di quello fascista poiché capace di annientarci con dolcezza. Since its world premiere in Milan in 2012, #LaMerda, written by Cristian Ceresoli and embodied by Silvia Gallerano, has brought its poetic and shocking stream of consciousness on the human condition around the world with sell-out seasons in Edinburgh, London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Adelaide and across Italy (where a subtle censorship is still applied), winning six major international awards including the coveted Scotsman Fringe First Award for Writing Excellence and The Stage Award for Best Performance. The play has already been translated and produced in Italian, English, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Spanish and Czech, and will shortly be translated into German and French.

Contents

THE SHIT

LA MERDA

The Stage Award-winning Actress Silvia Gallerano in The Shit_Disgust Decalogue #1 by Cristian Ceresoli

Fringe First Award 2012 for Writing Excellence
The Stage Award 2012 for Acting Excellence to Silvia Gallerano for Best Solo Performer
Arches Brick Award 2012 for Emerging Art
Total Theatre Award 2012 (Nomination) for Innovation
Premio della Critica 2012 as Best Show
Journalists’ Jury Award Giovani Realtà del Teatro
Audience Award Giovani Realtà del Teatro
Edinburgh Fringe Sell Out Show 2012

La Merda supports Teatro Valle Occupato

A production of Cristian Ceresoli and Marta Ceresoli with Richard Jordan Productions, Produzioni Fuorivia and support of Summerhall (Edinburgh, UK) and The Basement (Brighton, UK).

At the end of March 2012 the Italian Premiere of La Merda in Milan was completely sold out, with an extra show sold out too. In May in Rome La Merda was sold out again. In August 2012 the English version of La Merda (The Shit) has its World Premiere at Summerhall for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Here again the show was crowded until it became an Edinburgh Fringe Sell Out Show 2012. Meanwhile, the opera received many incredible five-and four-star reviews from major international media and won the Fringe First Award 2012 for Writing Excellence, the Arches Brick Award 2012 for Emerging Art and was nominated for the Total Theatre Award 2012 for Innovation. Finally Silvia Gallerano won The Stage Award 2012 for Acting Excellence as Best Solo Performer. In October 2012 La Merda sold out in Turin and Venice, in November it won the Premio della Critica 2012 as best show and went on to sell out at Primavera dei Teatri Festival and at Teatro Valle Occupato in Rome with an extra show sold out too. From now on it starts to tour in Europe and continues to sell out in every city where it is presented in Italy, a rare event in a country where the humanity is excluded from theatres. Due to popular demand, in January 2013 it returned to Milan where every night was sold out in advance, and returned to Teatro Valle Occupato in Rome where the venue was over capacity by more than 2000 people in five days, becoming a cult, a phenomenon above all the categories. The tour was interrupted from April to July 2013 and is now co-produced by Richard Jordan Productions Ltd and distributed in Italy by Produzioni Fuorivia. In August 2013, for a few performances, it returns to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Italian tour is re-starting from Teatro Elfo Puccini in November 2013 in Milan. In 2014 and 2015 a world tour is being programmed. A filmic version is being realized. La Merda has been translated into English, Danish and Czech and is currently being translated into French and Brazilian Portuguese.

Don’t be afraid (…) that I am stinking enough myself
to be capable of not feeling tied to all this shit
Pier Paolo Pasolini

Cowards, mercenaries and crooks
always ready to kneel before all tyrannies
Giuseppe Garibaldi

It’s time for some commercials, stay tuned
Maria De Filippi, Italian Tv Superstar

Five most powerful spotlights focused centre stage, stark, glacially cool, give back a desaturated vision of the woman, just as in a perfect commercial. The interpreter, nude, is already there under that stark and cold light, sitting on a pedestal, when the humanity (or audience) comes in. Now gripping a mike in her hands, she murmurs the national anthem and then vents in a stream of consciousness. Perhaps a reiterated, bright and rhythmic flash, or a sound effect of applause and laughing, plays as a counter-chant to that of her voice and to its melodic variations, wide, at times inhuman. Even the humanity might be invited to take flash photos or to give some big clap and make some fake laughing. The protagonist, a female, is chasing success with serious and beastly ferocity and lucid, killing determination. Some vocal masks (or characters) often appear from the literary score, and take possession of the voice. You must laugh. It’s a tragedy in three movements: The Thighs, The Cock, The Fame and one counter-movement: Italy.

Sure you’ve got to have a lot of courage, ’cause you’re there, on the platform, not even allowed to cross the yellow line and despite it all you find the strength to jump off, and it’s not easy, because there’s no one there clapping and shouting jump come on jump, no, you’re there, by yourself, and you must find the strength to jump and eventually get squashed all over the tracks, and you’ve got to have a lot of courage, and it’s not like the train stops at your stop every day, no, I want everyone to know that it’s not a becoming rich ’n famous kind of thing, but it’s more about making your life happen yourself, instead of just watching it from the sofa. Yes, I’ve got a feeling that this time it’s going to happen. Me, I’ve been always working hard, in my life, since I was a little girl, if mamma said to me you’ve got a problem in your head the consequence is that she’s just another one sitting on the sofa, whereas me, for an audition like this, for a part that might be a tiny part at first, I’ll make myself cute and when my turn comes I’ll raise my head and say, fratelli d’Italia, l’Italia s’è desta, dell’elmo di Scipio s’è cinta la testa, dov’è la vittoria, yes I know it’s not that much, but once you get in it and you meet the right people then everything starts opening up. Plus, if they’ve called me, just me, with the problem I have, they must have seen what I’m like and that yes I’m a small one and I’ve got yes these thighs of mine but still I never quit and never give up and even though I’m a small one, me, I jump, I go for it, and I don’t need anyone telling me jump come on jump, me, all by myself, even though I’m a small one, I can make it, my daddy always used to say it to me that the heroes who beat the shit out of the Austro-Hungarian empire and made our nation were all just starving little midgets, like five foot four, so that those red shirts they had on would even fit a kid nowadays, so small they were, and me, even me I’m a small one and in life you’ve got to work hard and make sacrifices because that’s the way to become very tall and look down on all this mob of cowards and mercenaries and crooks those ones who kneeling and kneeling down before all the tyrannies become hunchbacked just precisely like this squalid obscurantist lineage which according to my father made our race more effeminate, smaller, hunched, rachitic and crawling whereas the free man must look at the sky and I’ve always remembered this, in my life, and I’ve always looked at the sky and I always look at the sky and if one day I am ever going to be where I am it’ll be because in spite of my problem I won’t be and I am not a hunchback, since because of my thighs, and the way I am, even when I was a child I used to take the subway, all by myself, thirteen years old, every day to go to a lady who ran this beauty center, near the stadium, and you went climbing the stairs, never once the elevator, this is obvious, and next to the kitchen she had a little room with a small bed, and I used to lie down, and the lady spread some yellow cream on my thighs, and she stuck some electrodes into my thighs, and I stayed there, for forty minutes, every day, with this smell of sterilizer and spaghetti with octopus in tomato sauce. Is everything okay, missy? Just be patient for a little while, missy. And I didn’t know if I’d puke, because of that smell, and which way I should have directed the jet, in that case, and I was ashamed, so I would swallow it back, while the lady kept talking and telling me that with over ten years of sacrifice she’d been able to buy all those machines and with the sacrifice and the hard work and the instalments, over ten years, she’d been able to set up this beauty business VAT registered and without asking anything from anyone because she’d never had anything from anyone in her life and after all those years of being a clerk she’d started up her own venture so that there was no boss any longer to say yes or no to or when to go to pee or on vacations and payslips but it was her controlling the business and it was me who, while there, with my thighs and the electrodes stuck into my flesh, was listening to her fancying that good-looking lady, in her early sixties, with a red shirt torn over her breast leaving one sole tit uncovered, hard, and firm, while marching to conquer her freedom and her dignity as a female worker towards a new future made up by a new woman making her own decisions about her career and her life and her future, until those forty minutes were finally over, and she’d pull off those electr...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Contents