Coughing And Sweating A Lot

Introduction to "Alice in Prague" or "Christmas Eve in the cabinet of the wonders of Prague" La Cenerentola by Gioachino Rossini

Dedicated to Angela Carter

C on the eyes full of wise folly and an enigmatic smile on his lips, as a disturbing statue gothic / Victorian Angela Carter is present in many of the roads and crossroads of my literary soul and, like Janus a strange female, may also present two faces, always incompatible, often inconsistent, but nevertheless perfectly symmetrical with each other.

This queen of the shadows (and I mean shadows strangely bright!) And ambivalence, this narrator from the priceless art and deliberately dense prose of high symbols, this eccentric, diverse, Ms. English has drawn, in fact, the handful from the inexhaustible wealth archaic and classic fable, a warm "material" throbbing full of dream and therefore unconscious (beyond the appearances more Jungian, perhaps, that Freud), in-cite the words of Salman Rushdie "combine it with Baudelaire, Poe, Shakespeare, and then analyze it and surrealistic meat with cold fury and rational. "

His stories, his stories, rising up like so magmatic and foundations, brick by brick, there's a hole in the sky flying with sharply pointed towers.

The meeting with Angela Carter can not in deep trouble and affect, in particular those who, like me, is attracted to fairy tales, drama and child psychology, multi-purpose entity, multifaceted and mysterious together, syncretically can compose a fearsome demonic triad.

The Carter also wrote several stage adaptations to their stories, and especially loved the theater, radio (including only those who like her, and how me, were born before 50 years, can remember all the sound splendor). But in reality "all" his stories are purely theatrical in setting, in form and substance. The scenarios of some fairy tales themselves are changing even in the eyes of the protagonist through them, unexpectedly, in scenarios of cardboard, theater scenarios.

The preference, then, of Carter, the theater beggar, squalid and fascinating as a puddle after a rainstorm, that street theater with all its eight / paraphernalia of twentieth-century clown & Tumblers sad, from Luna Park roller coasters, circus freaks and striped awnings, fluttering in the wind of the north, is another important aspect of his personality, another vivid facet of his inner world.

And it is, as always, including in my own (thanks Verlaine! Thanks, Palazzeschi! Thanks Chaplin, Bradbury, Fellini!) And that, I think, of all those who have not succeeded yet entirely in casting off from the waters' s childhood, have failed, yet quite to forget ...

The real magic of "Alice, a Christmas in Prague" - a fairy tale plays on magic - it condenses surreal and valuable in the game of contrasts: folklore, superstition and problems mathematics, kaleidoscope of fireworks and rationality nonsense, pinnacles of gold, baroque of Bohemia and bananas on his head swaying to a now-for us- prehistoric Carmen Miranda, whose brazen sensuality destroys the steamy Victorian prudery Wing Carroll.

And here echoes the street theater: Dr. Dee, the seventeenth-century splendor of their courts of Elizabeth and Rodolfo that historically lived, seems to fall into that strange circus "noir" that appears at certain moments, the beautiful Cabinet wonders of Prague, a magician, scientist, alchemist, regress to showman, magician from overwork, even clown.
Moreover
-writer seems to suggest the evil behind the scenes- his creatures, the servants and slaves, those wonderful, preilluministici automata are perhaps not more than tumblers, poor puppets shivering and fear, whose stammering, numb words can not hide them in the bottom of a hollow voice echoed ... And mellifluous. And double.

"Double-sided, gentlemen and ladies! Just as there is legitimate to imagine the voice of any "creator" ... And what self-respecting, of course, is to be considered for any "created world" you should consider.

All this hot material was placed in the crucible and mixed by me, for my children: for my young players and for my young audience I wanted to test the survival skills and imaginative interpretation, measure body temperature in front of something infinitely different-structured, deep, layered- from what is usual, today "Their passing the convent" (TV, school, family, the societies they have the good fortune of living).

From cauldron has resurfaced - I was up again - anchovy increasingly hysterical in his "certainties" and "awareness" that looms over "Doctor" and all and , in the beautiful Cabinet, at first unconsciously, then with glossy and cruel determination, and unleashes a hellish Sabbath ... dancing.

That waltz was basically a demonic dance is today, a view not uncommon among those who have analyzed the swirling rhythms and extent of the disease for a century that swept much of the western world. Nothing but the waltz, then, could emerge from the depths of my imagination, stimulated, better than a sniff of cocaine, by Angela Carter; the waltz best suited to the situation, I think: "Woman is a feather in the wind / mutaaaaa ..."


Image - from a photo, technically beautiful - "my" Alice, about to unleash the infernal dance, holding the light blue long skirts, it literally flies. for me, priceless in the symbolically represent what happened at the end. In the end, I mean, not only the fairy tale play, but also of its same staging.

L 'impact with the demonic and with waltz was overwhelming for my players greatly surprised, for my audience, at first startled, then exhilarated, and even for myself who I was, at least, aware ... We soared.

Thanks Angela.

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And here's the Carmen Miranda Carter