Director: Paolo Panizza
Performers: Marica Mastromarino, Giacomo Toccaceli, Simone Tudda.
Sound composition: Jacopo Cenni

A talent show. Three actors competing. The prize? A future.
“Ratti” takes its cue from John B. Calhoun’s 1973 “Universe 25” experiment on over-population. In that study, the mice enjoyed a paradise of limitless food and water, virus-free, perfectly climate-controlled and predator-proof: the only cause of death was old age. As the elders lingered, the young were left to scrap for any kind of social role. The result was a collapse of social order and the erasure of the individual, as even the most basic bonds dissolved. Each repetition of the experiment followed the same trajectory and ended the same way—slow, total extinction.

“Ratti – Talent Show for an Apocalypse with an expectacular ending” imagines that dynamic on stage. The talent-show format spotlights the hopes and fears of the three young actor-contestants, spokespeople for their generation. In a party-like atmosphere the players, buffeted by orders and powerless to control outside forces, plunge, shatter, reconcile, fall in love and finally die—driven on by the relentless chant of “yes, yes, yes,” banner of a fake free will. Where does it happen? In a theatre turned escape room of its own conventions: bare walls, exposed lighting trusses, and at centre-stage a ring of white dust, ground bone, crumbling into the set of an apocalypse. A bodiless voice-over recounts the experiment, part fable, part cautionary tale, at once offering hope and delivering judgment. It’s a hellish talent show in which the contestants share a single goal: to claim a future.

A performance about the crisis facing younger generations, the theatre system, the world of work, society itself, whose ending can only be expectacular.

Residencies:
• 29/04/24 – 12/05/24 | Nau Ivanow Performing Space | Barcelona (ES)

Performances:
• 23/05/24 – 26/06/24  | Teatro Out Off | Milan (IT)