CAPITAL. A book that we haven’t read yet

Theartre Show | duration 100 min

At Teatro Out Off, via Mac Mahon 16

Once the play has finished on Wednesday 4th October the meeting with the company and Prof. Vittorio Morfino (ordinary Professor of the History of Philosophy at University Milano-Bicocca) will be held.
Moderated by Ira Rubini (Radio Popolare Milano)

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A theatre company that decides to play “Il Capitale” (Capital) by Karl Marx. It decides this because, after the end of the first lockdown, it feels the urge to listen to in the immediate successive stage, would lose their position of employment. Nicola and Enrico hence decide to cruise around Italy at the research of those places in which the pages of Marx became people, locations, events. One day they end up in a factory, the GKN of Campi Bisenzio, which has just closed. One morning of the 2021 summer, the 9th to be precise, the 422 employees which worked there received an email: they did not have to return to work the day after: they’ve been fired. From that day on the employees occupy the factory. In the first days of Autumn the company entered for the first time at the GKN. The workers invite them to eat boar together. From that day on they sleep there, inside the occupied factory, on some cots. Meanwhile Nicola and Enrico interview the hundreds of workers, participate at pickets, assemblies, manifestations, listen, observe, each time looking to return to Marx’s pages to try to establish a creative dialogue between “Capital” and what happens in the environment, between a classic on philosophical and economic literature and a group of human beings in flesh and bones. Then their attention shifted onto three people in particular: Iorio, maintainer, Felice, worker responsible for setting up and Tiziana, worker responsible for cleaning, which they invite to the theatre to make a show together. This is the start of the creation of Il Capital, a show which recounts the meaning what spending 20 years in a factory making pieces, of the difference between who’s done it and who has never done it, of the extraction of surplus value, the closing of one factory amongst many, of what happens when a group of workers decide to attempt to make history, of how for some time the logics of the Capitale become ousted from a perimeter of space, one of an occupied industrial establishment. Of how Il Capital, sooner or later will return to present the bill. Il Capital Is also the story of the meeting between a theatre company and a group of metal labourers in the Capitale’s autumn. Il Capital is especially a show on time, on its passing, on who owns it, on who sells it, buys it, frees it. 

A Kepler-452 project dramaturgy and direction Enrico Baraldi and Nicola Borghesi with Nicola Borghesi and Tiziana de Biasio, Felice Ieraci, Francesco Iorio – factory workers collective GKN and with the participation of Dario Salvetti light and scenic space Vincent Longuemare sound design Alberto Bebo Guidetti video and documentation Chiara Calió technical-scientific advice on “Capital” by Karl Marx Giovanni Zanotti assistant to the direction Roberta Gabriele machinist Andrea Bovaia light and video technician Giuseppe Tomasi sound engineer Francesco Vacca scenic elements created in the Laboratorio di ERT production Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale thanks to Stefano Breda and Cantiere Camilo Cienfuegos di Campi Bisenzio

Kepler-452 is a theatre company born in 2015 in Bologna from the encounter between Nicola Borghesi; Enrico Baraldi, Paola Aiello and, for the organisation role, first Michela Buscema and then, since 2021, Roberta Gabriele. Since it’s birth the company cultivates this urgency: opening the doors of theatres, go out, observe what’s around, in the unshakable conviction that reality has an autonomous dramaturgical force. The theatrical formats created range from the involvement of non-professionals on stage on the basis of their own biographies, to theatrical reportages that transform investigations into reality into performative moments, to the creation of audio-guided itineraries and other devices for interaction with the urban space, up to the creation of the Festival 20 30 which, starting from 2014, brought many under 30s on stage in an attempt to paint a generational fresco. Starting from 2018, a production path begins with ERT / Teatro Nazionale (“ Il giardino dei ciliegi – Trent’anni di felicità in comodato d’uso” (The cherry garden – Thirty years of happiness on loan for use) (2018) while in 2019 F. – Perdere le cose” (F. – Losing things) debuts. Starting from 2017, its creats several editions of Comizi d’amore, a participatory theatre format that tells the story of communities on stage starting from the questions posed by Pasolini in his honomymous documentary.

photos Luca Del Pia