The train

A performance staged in episodes, it envisions a train departing from Udine to Rome, the same journey made by Pier Paolo Pasolini when he left Udine for Rome in 1950.

A performance staged in episodes, it envisions a train departing from Udine and passing through Casarsa, Conegliano, Venice, and Bologna on its way to Rome, the same journey made by Pier Paolo Pasolini when he left Udine for Rome in 1950. Yet more than simply retracing Pasolin’s steps, it recounts the journey made by those who today leave Udine for Rome carrying the cultural, artistic and experiential baggage bequeathed to them by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Through this living heritage we carry with us, the piece will seek to provide a space in which to forge an ever closer, more intimate relationship between ourselves and the memory of Pasolini that lives within us.

Along the journey, the protagonists do what people do on a train: chat, read, listen to music and look out the window.

The journey, which today takes approximately six hours, back in the 70s would have taken at least eight hours.

The performance could be described as a form of site-specific theatre in which fellow train passengers recount stories, share memories and experiences, and watch the passing Italian landscape through the window.

The show will be divided into twelve episodes of thirty minutes each, the totality of which can be experienced back to back in one sitting lasting six hours.
In each episode there will be male and female passengers who carry within them the thoughts, voices, words, memories and traces of Pier Paolo Pasolini that remain within us today.  Their role is not to represent Pasolini the man, not to interpret his writings per se, but to express his legacy, the cultural legacy we continue to carry within us.

Among the performers taking part, not all are actors or actresses. There will be personalities and people from different walks of life accompanying Pier Paolo on his journey, each in his or her own way a bearer of his legacy.  

The video images that accompany the performance are not only those of the landscape that flows past the windows during the journey, which was filmed in the very same locations the train passes through en route to Milan, but also include archive material and superimposed images conveying the thoughts of his latter-day contemporaries, fellow travellers of Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Rita Maffei - Director’s notes