The original play, set up by Director Matteo Spiazzi with young Ethiopian actors, is a comedy, which tells the story of an Ethiopian family. The scene speaks about an apartment where three generations live together. Often the family is the place where relationships are focused on a straight way beyond social conventions and each character lives his life with some dramatic conflicts that are often comical to an external view.
The viewer will probably recognize himself in some typical family situations. The show therefore wants to be a fresco, or rather a family album, where comedy alternates with emotionally deep and poetic moments that speak to us of the flow of life in a constant movement.
The peculiarity of the show is the fact that it does not use verbal language without falling into pantomime. Also inspired by Arianne Mnouchkine’s work on the famous show L’age d’Or, in the performance some masks of the Commedia dell’Arte will be used in a contemporary way, but transposed into characters far from original archetypes, offering the possibility to the interpreters to play characters very far from theirs.
The performers are professional Ethiopian actors and students of the latest courses at the department of “College of Performing and Visual Arts” of the Addis Ababa University. During the work, a first phase saw a substantial pedagogical process to bring the actors to support the mimic language and the use of masks. This style is, for the Ethiopian theater, totally new compared to traditional local theatrical performances, especially for the use of the technique deriving from the mask theater and the dramaturgy of non-verbal actions.
Matteo Spiazzi is a theatre director and pedagogue. He specializes in the language of traditional mask (Commedia dell’arte) also reworking contemporary forms. In addition to classical performances, he has also made puppetry shows (in particular objects theatre) of experimental theater and theater-dance shows. He has worked in Austria, Belarus, Ecuador, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Russia, Slovenia, Ukraine where he is author and director of numerous plays in the repertoire of several local theaters, and teacher at several prestigious drama academies and universities.
Project Coordinator – Ayalneh Mulatu
Assistant Director – Dagne Abebe
Actors – Beminet Abrham – Biniam Birhanu – Abrham Aragaw – Yohannes Zigiju – Nahom Beyene – Getachew Gerem – Samrawit Tadesse – Yechale Desie – Eyob Nigatu – Bethelihem Solomon
Production Assistant – Simachew Abebe
Technical Assistant – Rediet Shibabaw
Light Techinician – Fikirnew Amsalu
Mask makers – Davide Falbo – Roberto Maria Macchi
Graphics Design – Surafel Abebe