Friday 8 January 2016, 18 pm at La Feltrinelli Modena (via C. Battisti, 17) the volume from which the show is taken will be presented "Instructions for not dying in peace" by Paolo Di Paolo, History and Literature Editions, 2015 The author, the director Claudio Longhi and the actors Donatella Allegro, Nicola Bortolotti, Michele Dell'Utri, Simone Francia, Olimpia Greco, Lino Guanciale, Diana Manea, Eugenio Papalia, Simone Tangolo.
Instructions not to die in peace is staged at the Teatro Storchi in Modena (7-17 January) and at the Teatro Bonci in Cesena (28-31 January). It will later be at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence. With the collaboration of Emilia Romagna Teatro Foundation and Teatro della Toscana Foundation.
A waltz danced over a pile of rubble, straw hats that become spiked caps, heaps of paper – banknotes, letters – that move, that travel: the theatrical triptych Instructions for not dying in peace (Heritage, Revolutions and Theatre) marks the debut in drama of the 2013 Strega Prize finalist writer Paolo Di Paolo; the story of a world - the one between 1914 and 1918 - that falls into a catastrophe.
The characters are there, on the crevasse: those who work at the post office, those in the factory, those who pray to God, those who travel and pursue ambitions, those who act, those who paint, those who spy; everyone is struck by unawareness, ignorance of the future, a future that for Lelo, Berto, Fernando, for the Officer, for Josephine, for Stefan Zweig or for Lev Trotsky is little more than a menacing cloud. While the storm prepares, they - like us - live, love, plan, hope.
For some, after decades of long European peace, the war even has the glow of the Great Opportunity: economic, political, existential. Ordinary, anonymous people, crosses or touches the biographical trajectory of characters consigned to history: men of power, artists, revolutionaries. But all take part in the same dramatic destiny: to see the world collapse as it was, the world as they knew it.
Paolo Di Paolo was born in 1983 in Rome. Finalist in 2003 at the Italo Calvino Prize for unpublished works and at Campiello Giovani, he is the author of the novels Tell me the night I was born (2008), Where were you all (2011, Mondello Prize and Vittorini Super Prize) and Send me a lot of life (2013 , Salerno Book of Europe Award, Fiesole Narrative Award and Strega Award finalist), all in the Feltrinelli catalogue. Many of his books were born from dialogues: with Indro Montanelli, to whom he dedicated All hopes (2014, Benedetto Croce Award), with Antonio Debenedetti, Dacia Maraini, Raffaele La Capria, Antonio Tabucchi, Nanni Moretti. Among other things, he has published Every journey is a novel (2007) and for children The flying cow (2014, finalist for the Witch Girls and Boys Prize).
