A show very dear to the Teatro Tram in Naples is returning to the theater: from Thursday 9 to Sunday 19 March, “Artemisia” will be on stage, written and directed by Mirko Di Martino and performed by Titti Nuzzolese and Antonio D'Avino.
A play that made its debut in October 2014 as part of the International Forum of Cultures, which was followed by three years of performances between the Church of San Gennaro all'Olmo, where the show was the protagonist during the Maggio dei Monumenti, and the Teatro Tram in via Port'Alba.
A now iconic performance, produced by Teatro dell'Osso, which tells the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, a seventeenth-century artist – one of the first – who loved to define herself as a “painter”, strong in her sense of social justice and feminine identity.
An identity that was violated by an episode of violence that saw Artemisia, daughter of the artist Orazio Gentileschi, as the protagonist: in 1612, in fact, the painter Agostino Tassi, a friend and colleague of her father, raped her in her Roman home. The show is not a purely biographical, almost documentary, narration of Artemisia's life.
On the contrary, the figure of the painter is inserted in a symbolic context, suspended between reality and illusion, between sin and guilt, between spirituality and passion, where the fears, doubts and anxieties of a woman who wanted to affirm her independence in a context dominated by men, as was the art of the seventeenth century in Italy, emerge.
“The show brings to the stage a universal reflection on the value of art, on its connection with life, on the ability of art to replace it – explained Mirko Di Martino -. Artemisia feels she has sacrificed everything to art: having reached the end of her life, she is forced to ask herself if it was worth it.
In a world dominated by men, she discovers that she is denied all freedom and autonomy. Even her art is interpreted as a constant return to the theme of violence and revenge, rape and castration. Artemisia believed she had become free thanks to art, now she discovers that it was her prison”.
