h. 20.00 Prêt-à-PORTER aperitif by Cuochivolanti (Turin)
booking recommended
€ 5,00

h. 21.00 Happy Meals – Gastro-performance with Cuochivolanti (Turin)
€ 10,00 full price ticket
€ 7,50 reduced ticket

by and with Davide Barbato and Chiara Cardea

sound design Enrico Ascoli
staging Marco Gennaro and Jacopo Valsania
lighting design Davide Marcone
direction Davide Barbato
organisation Offrome
production Cuochivolanti and Associazione CuochiLab
project realized with the contribution of the City of Turin, the Province of Turin, with the support of Sistema Teatro Torino e Provincia with the productive collaboration and support of Associazione Teatro Baretti/Studio Marco Gennaro Architetto/Alain Battiloro photographer/Enrico Ascoli/Giulio Pedretti/Luigi Ceccon photographer
Image Alain Battiloro

The show had its national premiere at the Teatro Astra in Turin on 9 June 2012, as part of the XVII Festival delle Colline Torinesi.

Happy Meals cites the famous children’s menu of the unnamed fast-food giant, which was perhaps the first, together with the equally famous carbonated soft drink with a secret recipe, to replace the term “hunger” with the term “happiness” in people’s stomachs, discovering a new, unexpected and insatiable appetite for our overfed digestive systems. But he also cites Becketti’s Happy Days, the senseless binge of words (of food) that saves us from the senseless desert of existence: ‘there is so little that can be said (eat), that one says (eat) everything, everything there is’.

Eating is a recreational act, for almost all of us. A small private party. It is an interval from which we expect to find a part of ourselves. For everything else (nourishment, energy, vitamins, proteins) there are supplements. And coffee, of course.

With this show we go on stage to talk about food: we do it thanks to Chiara, who is an actress and lends her body and voice to a unique experiment in emotional nutrition, exposing her meals to the public. We do this thanks to Cuochivolanti, who are cooks and have seen more dramas, tragedies, comedies and farces than any playwright by making people eat. With Enrico Ascoli’s precious sound mechanisms, we make them, the food, talk too, trying to understand its hidden and mysterious language, just in case we manage to grasp an important message. And then there are you. The diners. Perhaps you would like to give us your opinion. Your stomach’s opinion.

Enjoy your meal.

Cuochivolanti is the brainchild of Davide Barbato, Roberta Cavallo and Patrizia Capuzzi. Since 2009 they have been working with Chiara Cardea, an actress. Their activities are varied and range from catering and home cooking to the creation of events, shows and performances. Company productions: Kitchen Kabarett (2007); Cooking Time (2009); Tempesta di pasta (2009); L’ultima cena di Leonardo (2010); Cucinasonora (2010-2011); Anima in bocca (2012) and, with the Ass. CuochiLab, Happy Meals (2012), a project that won the STT – Sistema Teatro Torino tender.

Since 2010 Cuochivolanti have been curating the project Play with Food – La scena del cibo, the first visual and performing arts festival entirely dedicated to food. As part of the festival, Cuochivolanti has co-produced new visual and performing arts creations by artists from Turin and all over Italy. Work is currently underway for the fourth edition of the festival (20-24 March 2013), whose programme is built around four ongoing calls for ideas.

PLAY K(ei) is also 0-99