Fausto Paravidino
The Illness of Family M.

La malattia della famiglia M.
Translated into Serbian by Lary Zappia

Premiere: 19 October 2006 on the stage of Theatre Bojan Stupica
Show lasts approx. 1h 30’ and has no break.

CAST

ABOUT AUTHOR:

FAUSTO PARAVIDINO was born in Genoa on 15 June 1976. He worked with Jurij Ferrini’s company, staging numerous Shakespeare’s and Pinter’s plays. He attended the Teatro Stabile di Genova theatre school, worked with Lello Arena and Franco Branciaroli, and in the cinema he appeared in films by Pupi Avati. His play Gabriele, written together with Giampero Rappa, became the winner of the Festival of New Drama Works. His play The Two Brothers (2 Fratelli), written in 1998, won the Teatro di Riccione Tondelli Prize with the following explanation: ’The play’s force, enthusiastically received by jury members like a breath of fresh air, lies precisely in its closing upon itself, upon this family and, ironically, in its self-sufficiency, which keeps it in a state of suspension, simultaneously reproducing, through a game of mirrors, the mechanisms of our daily lives: something simple and straight forward, yet yet which expresses a sincere need, and it entertains and disturbs us because it pertains to us.’ Writer Luca Doninelli said about The Two Brothers that it is ’a beautiful play, and therefore honest, simple and very entertaining.’ Fausto Paravidino also wrote and staged the following plays: It Is All Cupid’s Fault (Tutta colpa di Cupido), written in 1999 together with Lello Arena and Giampero Rappa,  The Illness of Family M. (La malattia delle famiglia M., 2000), Still Life in the Ditch (Natura morta in un fosso), and Genoa 01 (Genova 01) – both written in 2001. He translated One For the Road by Harold Pinter, and Henry V, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Richard III by William Shakespeare. He also was a co-writer for the soap opera Dear Tomorrow. In 2000 he participated in the Royal Court Theatre’s International Residency workshop. In 2006 his script for the film Texas was a success at the Venice Festival. He also directed the film and played one of the parts in it.

top

ABOUT DIRECTOR

LARY ZAPPIA – Graduated from the Faculty of Drama Arts, University of Belgrade. Received his MA from the University of Calgary in Canada. A freelance theatre director, working  professionally since 1989. He has staged over 35 various projects (from operas and musicles to dramas, comedies and vaudevilles) in Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Lithuania, Italy and Canada in big national theatres, as well as outside institutions. Together with Nenad Šegvić, he is a founder of the HKD Theatre in Rijeka. He has received a number of professional and university awards and scholarships. Besides theatre directing, is engaged in scientific and pedagogical work, as well as translation. At the moment is completing his PhD thesis on directing as authorship, at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama, Toronto, Canada, under the supervision of Professor Linda Hutcheon.


top

ABOUT THE SHOW

I think that Paravidino's characters have nothing but the little earth under their feet (or the little corn between their fingers) and the huge sky under which they live. They are isolated from everything, surrounded only by the endless horizon. We live differently. We are used to not seeing horizon in our everyday life, we live surrounded by grey buildings, other numberless bodies, ugly metal boxes on wheels. We have to crane our necks really well to see the sky... (director Lary Zappia)

REVIEWS:

Infectious Apathy

The Illness of  the M Family by Larry Zappia is an exceptionally interesting, minimalist, poetically valuable performance, which, through analyzing deviated family relations, drafts a picturesque and representative cross-section of the conditions in society, defined by lack of meaning, which causes a kind of infectious apathy.
Ana Tasić, Politika, 22 October 2006

Periphery of Life

As in Chekhov’s famous play, or in Fellini’s Amarcord, the audience’s attention is focused on a family which, to vary the famous story, consists of two sisters, a brother and a father… Whilst the happiest memories of Checkov’s heroines are connected with the years spent in Moscow, while Father was alive, and whereas they live in a perpetual but, of course, fruitless effort to leave for Moscow again, in Paravidino’s play those memories are connected with Mother and the flat where they lived while she was alive. Father, expertly played by Miša Janketić, is a mere shadow of the pillar and foundation of the family: puzzled, peevish, sometimes abrupt and unreasonably capricious, and in fact broken and wholly abandoned to the tooth of inexorable time… Director Larry Zappia opted for a symbolic, precise, scenically deliberate staging of this play, founded on realistic minimalism, sometimes reduced to minute details, from acting to the use of music, and relatively tight, limited space. Namely, the stage is covered by ripe, healthy-looking corn which drips from a metal pipe instead of water. Thus we get a kind of desert, which is both fertile (wheat as a symbol of bread, life, birth etc) and sterile (wheat as a boundless sandy terrain, the feeling of being lost in a desert, hopelessness, death). On the other hand, minimalist music, which is performed live on the stage (Miss Zutić plays the bass very well), and which we hear in specific sections, accompanied by projections of rain and snow, constantly falling, create the additional impression of Fellinian and Chekhovian melancholy, of apathy, unfulfilled desires and lifelong sterility.
Slobodan Savić, Glas javnosti, 23 October 2006

top