Materials for a German Tragedy

directed by Fabrizio Arcuri, written by Antonio Tarantino

The performance narrates one the central episodes of the 20th century. Today, it not only continues to speak to our present but simultaneously offers a cornucopia of possibilities for contemporary representation.

Collecting together the images and voices of a film in which we are already protagonists - and not necessarily in a supporting role – Materials is both a historical essay and a cabaret in which our recent past interprets our present.

There is something in Tarantino’s writing that is episodic, as if written as a series of separate performances within a bigger show, like fragmentary episodes within an epic tale or the chapters of a large compendium on the culture and history of the 20th century; like the last gasps of an aesthetic wonder of a bygone age

More than a film, it is a true and proper theatrical serial staged in parts, a show consisting of recurring characters and story lines,  macro stories and self-contained episodes with hotel rooms, urban landscapes, a theatre stage, an aircraft cabin and its fuselage, an old dance hall, a Madonna concert and an abandoned factory providing the settings

The number of characters in  the stage-play  is approximately eighty, however, in full keeping with the original structure and theatrical imagination of the writer, each actor may play multiple roles.
The need to respect the diversity of roles and the desire to root the project in the local area from its very inception, led to the decision to hold a series of workshops during the course of June-July 2015 which would bring together both professional and amateur performers from a variety of backgrounds and across generations: men, women, boys, girls, elderly citizens, migrants, and former drama school pupils.