Merica is a performative event in which theatre and live sound come together to tell a story that comes from afar but, today, more than ever, current: the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
The original scenic creation closes the first edition of ZuNAPOLI, a review of theatre, music, cinema and meetings organized and directed by InBilico Teatro & Film, with the patronage of the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Naples, as part of Estate a Napoli 2019.
Two men, two foreigners, two Italian emigrants, like so many others, two anarchists who were sentenced to death under obscure, or at least specious, circumstances. There were many doubts about their guilt even at the time of their trial. They remain there, helpless amidst pleas, letters, and struggles of anger and love: two women, Luisa Vanzetti, Bartolomeo's sister, and Rose Sacco, Nicola's wife.
Sacco and Vanzetti paid for their anarchist, idealist and pacifist ideas, and for being part of a despised and opposed ethnic minority like the Italian one.
"I wrote this show," explains Ramona Tripodi, "during this hot, muggy summer. Gazing at the sea no longer conveyed a sense of joy and life, but only the sensation of a submerged cemetery of migrants, the emigrants of yesterday. Then, by pure chance, I came across the letters of Sacco and Vanzetti and the trial documents, making it urgent for me to write this show and stage it now."
It was the 20s of the last century, or today it is the 20s of the new millennium, but the prejudice does not change. The text, intertwining the letters to the family and the original trial documents (except for Rosina's letter to Nicola Sacco), brings this sad page of history back to the stage, addressing it from a human point of view, beyond the purely political one.
EDITORIAL TEAM
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