A French court declares an 11-year-old girl consenting to the rape suffered by a friend of her older brother’s. Once she becomes a woman she decides to take the law into her own hands. The plot is constantly alternating between past and present: the first is set in a carnival, the latter at the woman’s home. A violence is consumed in both places, but the roles are reversed. The text by Pauline Peyrade is a lucid and relentless dramaturgy that doesnt’t want to divide the world between good and bad, but wants to analyze cultural and anthropological mechanisms that trigger violent behaviour.
The outcome is a nightmare-show, a no-place where two actors act as teenagers and adults, and where they evoke, through the theatrical word and few scenic elements, the dynamic of a terrible story. The show is claustrophobic and violent, the movements are emphasized by the lights of a photo set which is constantly changed by the actors. Suitable for small places, in wich there is a small distance between the audience and the stage, the show is also what the audience feels: their perspective is so near, and they are in the uncomfortable and itchy role of voyeurs, someone who spies on the most private intimacy. Before the eyes of the viewer, the game is alternated with the atrocious, youth is alternated with death. It is a terrible game room, a sort of Squid Game in which those who paid the ticket can attend a rape or an execution. There are no winners, but there’s only the mirror of a society that has resoundingly failed. A story like many others, between rabbits, toys and Billie Eilish’s songs; you cannot feel but pain and deep sorrow for such a miserable story.
Compagnia Licia Lanera was born in 2006, co-founded by Licia Lanera named Fibre Parallele. Compagnia Licia Lanera works with experimental and prose theatre and it is funded by MIC and Regione Puglia.
The core business of the company is to produce theatre shows and go on tournée mirroring the tradition of Italians tour companies, “compagnie di giro”. Shows produced and toured from 2006 to today are fifteen. To date, the repertoire has eight shows to its credit: The Black's Tales Tour, Mamma (first prize at the Troia Teatro Festival), the trilogy Guarda come nevica, Venere/Adone, Con la carabina and Love me. For the theatrical show Cuore di cane, Licia Lanera and Tommaso Danisi were among the finalists of the 2019 Ubu Awards for the roles of best actress and best sound project, respectively. In 2018, Compagnia Licia Lanera won the FUNDER35 loan, for the three-year period 2017-2019 it was supported by the Puglia Region for live entertainment. Since 2018 it has been supported by the MIC and is configured as a cultural enterprise.
In 2021 the Trilogy project takes hold: the staging of the three shows of Guarda come nevica. The texts of three different Russian authors have their roots in three different literary genres. The project, which takes three years of work to come to life, takes the form of a single show in three parts: Guarda come nevica 1. Cuore di Cane by Michail Bulgakov; Guarda come nevica 2. Anton Chekhov's Il gabbriano; Guarda come nevica 3. I sentimenti del maiale, original writing by Licia Lanera, inspired by the figure and poetic production of Mayakovsky. In 2022 the show Con la carabina made its debut at the POLIS Teatro Festival, within the international focus of French dramaturgy. The direction and space are by Licia Lanera and the text is by the contemporary French playwright Pauline Peyrade. Danilo Giuva and Ermelinda Nasuto are on stage. Con La Carabina is a production by Compagnia Licia Lanera, which sees the co-production with POLIS Teatro Festival and the collaboration with Angelo Mai and E production. In 2022 the show gets two Ubu Awards for best direction and best foreign text staged by an Italian company. Also from 2022 is the latest production LOVE ME two pieces by Antonio Tarantino of which Licia Lanera is director and interpreter, production by Compagnia Licia Lanera and Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale.
