Rome – On Monday, 1016 February 2, within the prestigious setting of Teatro Argentina, actor and director Leonardo Petrillo launched the Yorick Festival, an initiative dedicated to the figure of the “jester.”
In addition to Petrillo, the press conference was attended by Francesco Siciliano (President of the Teatro di Roma), Luca De Fusco (Artistic Director of the Teatro di Roma), and Federico Mollicone (President of the Culture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies). The project was born from a collaboration between national and international theatrical institutions, bringing live performances into the museums of Rome. The choice of February is deliberate; as the official website of the Teatro di Roma Foundation explains: “The festival is a journey through new dramaturgies, marked by the spirit of Carnival and cultural rediscovery.”
The centerpiece of the celebration will be the production of Casanova ½, written and directed by Petrillo, which will run at Teatro Torlonia from February 12 to 15. The program will conclude on February 16 and 17 with Philippe Nicaud’s Othello.
During the meeting, Hon. Mollicone highlighted his ongoing efforts to revolutionize the museum experience through the “Italia in Scena” (Italy on Stage) reform:
“My reform has passed its first reading in the Chamber of Deputies. It is now in the Senate, and since the deadline for amendments expires today, it will reach the floor within a few days for pro forma approval.” Mollicone further emphasized the significance of this legislation: “It is vital because a core pillar of this reform is the establishment of a national circuit for live performances within museums, supported by a permanent annual fund of 5 million euros. This means that entities like the Yorick Festival, as well as initiatives spearheaded by national permanent theaters (Teatri Stabili), can now bring their work into museum spaces across the country.”
Below is the statement by Leonardo Petrillo on the relevance and necessity of the “Yorick” figure in today’s society:
The journey begins on 7 and 8 February at Palazzo delle Esposizioni with Viața mea din flori, a Romanian-language monologue by Teatro Sică Alexandrescu. Drawn from the work of poet Cristian Popescu and performed by Florin Coșuleț, the show is an intimate and explosive confession about the encounter between humanity and art: a symbolic marriage between the author and his creativity that becomes “Popescu Art”. In a world of masks and duplicity, this private diary turns into an open-hearted revelation, a posthumous confession that defeats all forms of dissimulation. Enhancing the emotional vibrations of the narrative is the live music by Zeno Apostolache (accordion), Ciprian Dancu (clarinet) and Kostyák Márton (double bass), capable of translating into sound metaphor the intensity of a rare and precious text.
On 9 February the festival arrives at Palazzo Altemps with Quell’attimo di beatitudine, a monologue written and performed by Christian di Filippo. Inspired by the irreverent immediacy of English playwright Alan Bennett, the author constructs a contemporary investigation into Faith and its commercial distortions in today’s world. At the heart of the scene emerges the theme of “beauty”, visible only when one pauses to observe reality in its entirety. In a tight dialogue with the audience, any form of a fourth wall is abolished: unpredictability and the present moment become living material, turning each performance into a unique dramaturgy.
On 9 and 10 February, in the Sala delle Muse at Palazzo Braschi, audiences are immersed in Ulisse Inside with the cuntista Salvo Piparo, guardian of Sicily’s most ancient memories through his extraordinary stories of life and popular legends. A Mediterranean score in which the sea of Palermo becomes the ink with which to rewrite classical epic, transforming the tale into a carousel of memories marked by the rhythm of the spoken word and the gesture of a wooden sword. The absolute protagonist is the sea, keeper of stories etched into people’s faces: from historic naval battles to the legends of Colapesce, Pietro Fudduni and Vanni the Fisherman. The myth of Ulysses is thus reinterpreted through the imaginative vision of a young hero, placing every verse in the waters and among the peoples of the city of Palermo.
The festival returns to Palazzo Altemps on 12 and 13 February with the monologue At Home With Will Shakespeare, performed by international actor Pip Utton, who brings the Bard back to life in a private and surprising portrait, performed in English. A man who loves, laughs, drinks, sings, dances and cries, while being compelled to write plays and poetry to earn a living. A man leading a double life, as a family man and landowner in Stratford-upon-Avon, and as a great playwright in London. The actor thus guides us in discovering the most intimate and perhaps lesser-known life of the Bard, and his greatest successes.
The beating heart of the festival is Casanova ½, signed by Petrillo himself and staged at Teatro Torlonia from 12 to 15 February. In an extraordinary coincidence in time – the 300th anniversary of Giacomo Casanova’s birth and the 50th anniversary of Fellini’s masterpiece – Petrillo brings to the stage the “first influencer in history”, a man who turned his own existence into an uninterrupted performance of himself. A multifaceted figure – alchemist, spy, diplomat and even translator of Homer – Casanova was a tireless traveller through space and the female universe. The show investigates this ancestral desire for knowledge in a way that goes beyond machismo to become an anthropological inquiry. As the director states: “The woman could only be the focal point of this homage to Fellini, but Fellini’s woman, like Casanova’s, is not a real woman: she is a fleeting and mysterious vision, a mosaic of fantasies ranging from Umbrian madonnas to callipygian Venuses. Both were drawn to the grotesque and the marvellous; in an era marked by the Me Too movement, it is essential to reaffirm that theirs was not mere possession, but an insatiable curiosity toward the enigma of the feminine, understood as a territory of discovery and otherness.”
Bringing this cartography of madness and genius to a close will be, on 16 and 17 February at MACRO, the French-language production Othello, directed and performed by Philippe Nicaud, sealing a journey that transforms the city into a score of voices and cultures. On stage is the story of a former slave who becomes a general in the Venetian army, arousing the jealousy of Iago, who seeks revenge. He invents a false love affair with Desdemona, Othello’s wife, to push Othello to the edge. By choosing to present the play from Iago’s point of view, Philippe Nicaud offers a tragic story of jealousy and power, enriched by an original soundtrack and live songs that punctuate the drama. The actor and director moves across the stage entangled in a web of internal threads, symbolising the spider’s web that Iago patiently weaves, the web in which he traps Othello.
