CHIARA GUIDI (SOCÌETAS) RESIDENCY | SPRING 2019

The Errant Method as Children’s Art Theatre | A Lecture by CHIARA GUIDI

March 5, 2019 | 10 AM

Experimental Theatre, UNM

Free and open to the public

THE LAND OF THE EARTHWORMS

DIRECTED BY CHIARA GUIDI (SOCÌETAS)

March 10, 2019 | 11 AM & 2 PM | Free performances reserved for community groups

March 12, 2019 | 7 PM | Ticketed performance open to the public

For reservations email: juli@tricklock.com

Elizabeth Waters Center for Dance

Part of Revolutions International Theatre Festival

The Land of the Earthworms Inspired by the classical tragedy Alcestis by Euripides

Written and directed by Chiara Guidi (Socìetas) Assistant director Vito Matera

For children from 7 years old and adults

Earthworms, blind and deaf, turn over and sift the earth day after day. From the depth of the ground, bringing to surface little heaps of earth, they lift the earth, they transform the landscape and they preserve the many old objects they bury.

They cover and protect, allowing what is buried to return to the surface. To find earthworms you need to dig and enter the earth, because only by being with them for a while is it possible to understand their secret. Oh! It is an impossible undertaking, because no one can go underground, and stay alive living with the earthworms! It is then necessary to do what Alcestis did, become like her, to follow her story as told by Euripides, a poet of ancient Greece. 

Alcestis, accepting to die in the place of her husband Admetus, descend into the viscera of the earth and then, thanks to Heracles’ help, goes back to the surface leaving the earthworms to their tireless action: going down to then come back up…under…over…upside down…an inextinguishable movement that enlightens tragedy with hope.

The show—created through a laboratory with Chiara Guidi on the Errant Method—is an open theatre form, and needs the children to take Be REalised and Take form.

Children, led by the figures of the narrative, enter the performance space and determine the progress of the story through their decisions and interventions.

Chiara Guidi, along with Romeo and Claudia Castellucci, in 1981 was one of the founders of Socìetas Raffello Sanzio (now renamed Socìetas), the Italian company that, above any other, has been at the forefront of the international theatre scene since the early eighties. She was the soul of dramatic rhythm and vocal composition for the company’s productions, directing numerous plays and researching each actor’s spoken part. Author and producer of sound theatre, since the 1990s she has also created an intense artistic experience with children as part of her research and analysis of the relationship between voice and childhood which has earned her several awards, including an Ubu Prize 2013.

The Land of the Earthworms is part of Chiara Guidi’s Residency at the University of New Mexico hosted in partnership with Revolutions International Theatre Festival and Tricklock Company. This project is made possible with the generous support of New Mexico Arts and is presented in collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Los Angeles.