Silvia Costa Marino Formenti

La Femme au marteau

Archive 2021
Theatre
MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis
decemberdec 8 – 11

© Simon Gosselin ©

© Simon Gosselin ©

© Simon Gosselin ©

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Direction and stage design, Silvia Costa
With Hélène Alexandridis, Marief Guittier, Anne-Lise Heimburger, Rosabel Huguet Dueñas, and Pauline Moulène
With the piano sonata of Galina Ustvolskaja, performed onstage by Marino Formenti
Costumes, Laura Dondoli
Sound design, Nicola Ratti
Lighting, Marco Giusti
Text, Umberto Sebastiano
Assistant, Rosabel Huguet Dueñas
A production by Comédie de Valence, centre dramatique national Drôme-Ardèche 
A coproduction by Théâtre National de Bretagne (Rennes) ; Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg - scène européenne ; MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis (Bobigny) ; Festival d’Automne à Paris
In association with MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis (Bobigny) ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
With support from King’s Fountain

The inspiration for Silvia Costa’s latest creation stems from the fascinating mystery of the music of the Russian composer, Galina Ustvolskaja (1919-2006). Dimitri Chostakovitch’s only pupil, the musical experimentations that she embarked upon were of

Nicknamed “the lady with the hammer” because of the highly physical relationship that her scores created with the keys, Galina Ustvolskaja forged a musical universe characterised by its militantly primitive simplicity. Inspired by the composer’s strength of character and intensity of her music, the latter still rarely performed today, Silvia Costa conjures up a visual story for each of the six piano sonatas written between 1947 and 1988, performed live onstage by Marino Formenti. Six female characters, played by actresses of different ages, make up living tableaux in which desires, fears and nocturnal visions find their expression, seized upon in the intimate moment in which they are confronted with love and death. At the frontiers of theatre, dance, music and the visual arts, here Silvia Costa’s work is a quest for choreographic purity and sparsity. She delves deep into the music of Galina Ustvolskaja and in it she finds an invitation to freedom, a means by which to imbue moving bodies with an unshakeable thirst for life.

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