A + A. The story of a first time

direction Giuliano Scarpinato
suitable for ages 14 +

“Angel
is not like others
does not know how to swap skin, remove the peel
squeeze the pulp
a kiss: doesn't know what it is.
Angel doesn't know where their body ends, has a tuft of hair out of place
and a wrinkled shirt, always.
Angèl is their own and no one else's.”

A. and A. are 15 and 17 years old. A girl and a boy like many others. They spend their time between school, and a shared passion for music, sport and many other things. They are full of dreams, uncertainties, doubts and aspirations. And they haven't made love yet.
In class, however, no one talks about anything else; classmates talk about their heroic exploits, and everyone seems to be an expert. They are all self-confident and seem to know every detail of what goes on beneath the sheets. But A. and A. wonder where their classmates learned it all? It is practically impossible to talk about it with their families - too embarrassing - and at school they only talk about it occasionally, and then only about unwanted pregnancies or diseases. So what is sex really like between two people? Is it what A. and A. have occasionally glimpsed in pornographic videos, on someone's phone during P.E. or in the yard after school? Will we really have to do all those absurd things when we are alone? Are we expected to look "right" when we take our shirts off, so perfect, our eyes and our words always ready? But what words? What will we say?

A + A. The story of a first time is the journey of two teenagers like many others discovering intimacy; an adventurous journey full of surprises, in which A. and A. will have to juggle untrue myths, "hearsay", fears and performance anxieties, and together achieve something new, unique, special and unrepeatable.

"It is certainly not easy to talk about the first, clumsy steps in the world of sex, the use of pornography as a source of information and "self education", the complex relationship with one's own body and that of the other, and the way all these things interact with the elementary lessons of feelings. In order to achieve this with grace, poetry and appropriate irony, I have looked to the use of multiple instruments: a dramaturgy that, as always, is born from the symbiosis of the performers; dance, the gesture of dance as the sublimation and transfiguration of that which cannot and must not be shown; video as an objective correlative of the central role of technology in adolescent life, but also as a translator of dreams, fantasies and expectations; the scenic space that contains all this both as a physical and a mental dimension; and finally music, a universal language capable of communicating sentiment and giving voice to everything that voices are looking for ".
Giuliano Scarpinato