Unconsolable Darwin
(A piece for troubled souls)

Lucia Calamaro

An elderly woman, a performative artist, who names herself Ex Fluxus, pretends to be dead to gain her three busy, inattentive, distant, aggressive, and absent kids’ attention. She fakes her death like some animals do: Maria Grazia practices “thanatosis”, a common practice among certain species that “play dead” in order to escape predators attacks. Her could be a warning, a signal, a monition, a metaphore, or simply a performance…
A midwife daughter, crushed by her concern for the new generations, a clumsy environmentalist: Simona. A son who is a teacher in primary school, a very good man, who has got future in his hands and comes across a smoky unpublished version of The Origin of Species quoted by Borges in an interview with Bioy Casares: Riccardo. A daughter in symbiosis with her mother, plastic
performer-artist, who investigates Amazonian perspectivism and the theories of the interspecies, feeling closer to the vegetal world than to the animal: Gioia.

Running time: 90 minutes