PINOCCHIO’S ZOO

13 April, 10.00, 12.00 on stage of Novgorod Drama theatre

WITH SUPPORT OF ITALIAN INSTITUTE OF CULTURE IN ST.PETERSBURG

DRAMMATICO VEGETALE/ RAVENNA TEATRO, Ravenna, Italy

By Pietro Fenati

 «PINOCCHIO’S ZOO»

Director — Pietro Fenati

Actors — Pietro Fenati, Elvira Mascanzoni

Live music  — Jenny Burnazzi, Andrea Carella

Sound and lights — Alessandro Bonoli

Duration – 35 minutes

Age – 6+

Tackling the adventures of Pinocchio in an original manner is not so simple. It’s one of the world’s most widely read books and has undergone infinite adaptations for stage and screen. Among the many, Drammatico Vegetale too has already tackled the subject, if we may put it like that, by staging a successful show about Pinocchio in far off 1990. This show, playing on the theme of the lie as an irreverent but creative gesture, was performed for many years in Italy and abroad. So why go back to a theme that has apparently been so extensively exploited? This is the destiny of great stories, which never cease to amaze us and stimulate our creativity. And then we fall once more into the “Pinocchian” net…

This time we tell a story from the viewpoint of the many animals that populate the pages of the book, and we tell it in our own way, with few words and the enchantment of figures and gestures. On stage two improbable demiurges do what always happens in theatre: they create a story. A story which in the beginning is “history”. First comes light, then space and time, and then life is born. And from there, from life created, a strange bestiary unfolds that ranges from the talking cricket, who doesn’t talk but chirps, to the flea and the hen, the carrier pigeon, the serpent and the gigantic shark: a bestiary or a zoo, which shows us the way in search of the figure of Pinocchio; in search, at bottom, of our own humanity. The two demiurges, maybe the cat and the fox, at last lead us to the tree from which our hero Pinocchio is born. If this tale of formation tells us that even wooden marionettes have a soul, it also tells us that in the adventures of Pinocchio we may find the reasons underlying our existence. We just have to seek, perhaps observing things with a slightly squinting glance. The action onstage is accompanied by live music from Jenny Burnazzi (cello) and Andrea Carella (classical guitar).

Mario Bianchi in Eolo

«Animals are once more the protagonists in Pinocchio’s Zoo where Piero Fenati and Elvira Mascanzoni of Drammatico Vegetale/RavennaTeatro literally build, before the eyes of our famous marionette, a minuscule zoo; here too, toys reign supreme. All the inhabitants of the microcosm living in the natural environment of woodlands and ponds live in a rarefied and poetically refined atmosphere, also created by live music from Jenny Burnazzi on cello and Andrea Carella on classical guitar.» Mario Bianchi — Eolo