Livia Grossi
A journey between Italy, Burkina Faso and Senegal to talk about theatre and emigration, in times of crisis, through videos, interviews and music.
On the subject, the journalist writes: “The Senegalese are starting to go back home because the game is no longer worth the candle, the Italians are thinking of Africa to escape from loneliness and poverty”.
At the heart of the work is a reflection on a West adrift, the need for a new redefinition of the words “wealth” and “poverty”, but also the urgency of finding a meaning to the encounter between spectator and actor. To rediscover that “Theatre of the origins” which, beyond any commonplace, establishes a renewed form of sharing reality through storytelling and its representation.
A theatrical rite, ancient and daily, in search of a new civilisation of dialogue that compares different identities and expressions.
A rethought journalism, in turn a “journalism of the origins”, capable of transmitting, with feeling and reason, new and necessary motivations.
“More than 200 theatre companies work in Burkina Faso, the sixth poorest country in the world: as if to say, when theatre is an emergency there are no limits, only challenges. Here the shows are a means of information and social education. They talk about AIDS, emigration, infibulation, deaths in childbirth, but also about how to cure oneself with herbs. Theatre is everywhere, under the baobabs in the villages, in the squares amidst the red dust of the streets, under the stars of the theatre in Ouagadogou, or among the clothes hanging in the House of the Word, the ancient court of Sotigui Kouyaté, the griot chosen by Peter Brook for his Mahabharata’.
The reading is preceded by a prologue dedicated to Thomas Sankara, “the African Che Guevara”, with excerpts from his speech on public debt, and updates on recent events in Burkina Faso (photos by Marina Spironetti).
A “theatrical reportage” that transforms the stage into a page of a newspaper, with photographic contributions, video interviews, live music and the journalist who says the piece looking the audience in the eye.
text and voice Livia Grossi; photos and video Emiliano Boga; music Jali Omar Suso; scenic writing Emanuela Villagrossi; video editing Silvia Torri.
Livia Grossi. A freelance journalist, she works for Corriere della Sera, covering theatre, culture and reportage. A great traveller, she has toured South America, Albania and sub-Saharan Africa. Her travels and encounters with people have led to the creation of “Reportage Teatrali”, a different way of reporting, a “new” journalism, which draws heavily from the agora from which it originated.