Seen at Festival delle Colline Torinesi on the 30th of October 2022
4 stars – urgent storytelling
MDLSX is a complex construction, a mix of techniques, stories, and themes. Silvia Calderoni performs a long monologue, which seems largely autobiographical, about gender and intersexuality. She dialogues with videos and music, holding a phone camera in front of herself, to which she speaks her lines.
Under Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò’s direction, the performer’s intimate speech is outspoken to herself alone. A round screen acts as a magnifying mirror, allowing the audience to peep into the performer’s intimacy. The audience is only once openly addressed, as the voyeurs staring at the performer but, also, as the witnesses of their journey.
The text contains references to many texts on the theme of gender, such as bearing a character from Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex and some quotation from Paul B. Preciado’s Countersexual Manifesto.
Despite the narrative being too long and slightly too messy, this performance is a very urgent work, especially in the Italian context. It breaks everything, it points at other possibilities. It reminds, once more, that the personal is political, and plays the key critical role theatre should have in our societies.
29th and 30th of October 2022
Running time: 80 minutes
Venue: Teatro Astra
Company Website: https://www.motusonline.com/en/
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