Which are for teenagers the behavioural and cultural reference models to live their relationship with feelings? How, in their routine, these models which are based on narcissism, egoism and sometimes violence, have an influence?

RAGSOPERA (OperaStracci) is a performance about feelings, an attempt to tell the natural relation with their own emotions and their own body which changes: theatrical frames that, with no words and with the help of the most famous airs opera, perform the complicated travel of growth: the life.

On the stage, similar to a ring, a heap of rags, thanks to the actors, becomes voiles, balls, boxing gloves, stomachs, and even dolls/marionettes which feel strong emotions as tenderness, memory and loss elaboration.

The opera’s airs support atmospheres, emotions and even plays with the mysterious magic of a lyric voice that always captivate the listeners.

It needs 30 meters of rags to tailor one of the marionettes which springs from actors’ hands, in front of the spectators. It takes one hour to attempt to tell the feelings of two teenagers and the mysterious of bonds, of affections.

From art history to melodrama, from dance to puppet theatre and to the ancient Japanese method of Bunraku, an evocative play which utilizes art languages and reverberates daily life, framing it in “another” context that, in the distance, allows to deal with delicate themes as feelings, always more necessary for a digital generation.    

Director Notes
The very interesting bet was to try to put together theatrical actions without words with the melodrama and the story of a lifetime. We improvised, built , destroyed a lot of objects, heard lots of opera arias from the most famous to the most unknown, we had to front insidious uncertainties (where are we going? What is the point? what are we doing, building?) fortunately accompanied always by the solid structure of the melodrama. The strictly geometrical stage and the rigorous sets in their simplicity were the perfect ground for a dialogue between the rigor of musical time and the action of the actors. Actors who have had to meet and discover techniques, mastery, magics to inhabit the stage space without using the word, but relying only on the rigor of their bodies, of their discipline. As in all games, we knew how and where we were going, and also apprehended the game in its highest expression (that of children, lovers, life), only by playing and playing.

The performance RAGSOPERA has been presented also abroad in Romania and Turkey.

Watch the teaser