12 Mar Point of View by Progetto Amunì in Larissa
The Synergy of Music Theatre happily invites you to the performance P.O.V. – Point of View by Progetto Amunì. A profoundly choric, poetic and deeply political theatrical performance presented by the Italian organization Babel only for one night, on Tuesday 17 of March at 8:00 pm at SYNERGEIO culture space. The show is presented in the occasion of the group’s visit in Larissa for collaborative works with SMouTh’s team regarding EX.TRE.M project (EXcellence in TheaTre with Migrants).
With Abdoul Diallo, Julia Jedlikowska, Gloria Oppong, Alfred Sobo Blay
Light design and Music: Jean-Mathieu Marie
Artistic advisor: Giuseppe Provinzano
Assistant: Rossella Guarneri
A Babel production with the support of Spazio Franco
Date: Tuesday 17 of March at 8.00 pm
Venue: At SYNERGEIO Culture Space, Oikonomou ex Oikonomon 22, 41223 Larissa, Greece
Ticket: 5€
PRESALE at the box office, Oikonomou Ex Oikonomon 22, Larissa (Monday–Friday, 10.00 am–2.00 pm & 7.00 pm–9.00 pm) Contact numbers: 2411 812 431 & 2411 812 432
SYNOPSIS
A boat sets sail from Western Sahara to Europe but the currents push it away into the Atlantic Ocean. No one notices. Nine months later, it is found in Brazil, abandoned, empty, forgotten. A luxury yacht sinks in twenty minutes during a storm off the coast of Sicily. A few hours later, the whole of Europe mobilises its most important resources to search for survivors. In Crimea, a Russian-Ukrainian family decides to flee in a makeshift boat on the Black Sea. They will never arrive. A Palestinian poet leaves his homeland. He has nothing left, no one left. He takes only his poems with him, but he will never write another. A boy from Mali leaves Libya on a boat. He has a school report card full of good grades sewn into his pocket. No one will ever read it.
Stories that, like lives, intertwine, multiply and merge. Lives and dreams that found refuge not on land but at the sea are viewed as equal, without differences, without privileges, without discrimination. P.O.V. – Point of View is a choral, poetic, and political narrative that, through the eyes of the sea, overturns the perspective of those who defied it and failed to return. It is a journey in reverse: not towards the destination, but from the bottom of the sea to the moment of departure, as a way to restore the dignity of suspended stories and lost dreams.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
We chose to narrate the journey backwards. Not as another failed landing, not as the pain of an arrival that never happened but from the reverse route: from the bottom of the sea towards back home, to the first moment when it all began. It is a different perspective, a necessary reversal. In this backward movement, the sea becomes a tomb and a guardian, a place from which voices, bodies and memories emerge. Stories emerge from the depths: a young man from Mali, a poet from Palestine, a family fleeing Crimea, invisible workers on a yacht, the missing people from a ship in the Atlantic. The story is constructed like a choral ritual, made up of gestures and words that revisit memory. On stage, the actors do not play characters but evoke presences: they become bridges between the past and the present, between real and imaginary life. “Point of View” means looking from a different angle, it means reversing our perspective, the one that observes from the land and being able to see from the side of those who crossed the sea with no return. Through the eyes of the sea. It is a theater that does not document but imagines; does not represent but remembers; does not answer but asks questions.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT AMUNÍ
Amunì is a characteristic expression in the Sicilian dialect (Sicily) that means “let’s go,” “come on,” or “come.” Amuní is a Social Theater program created in Palermo, Italy, with the aim of offering young people of different ethnicities (whether they are immigrants, unaccompanied minors, asylum seekers, second-generation Italians or young people with migrant background) opportunities for professional training in the performing arts—artistic, technical, and organizational—with a multidisciplinary structure and a strong mission of social integration. The project, promoted by the Babel organization, has found its natural and permanent home at Spazio Franco (Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa): a public space dedicated to contemporary creation, cultural diversity, and artistic research. Since 2017, the Amuní program has been operating as a permanent workshop for training, creation, and active participation, in which the languages of art are interwoven with the paths and talents of the participants. The program runs throughout the year and includes workshops in theater, dance, music, set design and production, as well as individual coaching, critical thinking, and collective creation classes. Each educational cycle concludes with the production and presentation of a new original performance, staged by a multicultural and multidisciplinary team of under-30s, consisting of young trainees from the program.
This performance is presented in the context of the EX.TRE.M project (EXcellence in TheaTre with Migrants) which is co-funded by the EU (Erasmus+).