FUCKING THEATRE working title

2016 CANCELED

 

******* ******* was a work commissioned by Emilia Romagna Fondazione Teatro for Arena Del Sole in Bologna. It was developed entirely in response to the buildings history as a convent, open-air theatre, cinema and covert sex sauna. The original classical façade of the theatre still announces: Ludgo Dato Agli Spettacoli Diurni (the place given to daytime shows) but the sex sauna has been hidden behind boarded up doors.

 

The main auditorium is a 1990s redevelopment of the classical style and beneath it a miniature replica version was built with fewer seats also laid out in a horseshoe structure.

 

******* ******* was to be a live installation that lasted for six days and six nights.

 

THE DAYS 

Open between 12.00 - 19.00

Some notes:

 

From the foyer the audience enter the small lift that takes them to the top level of ‘the gods’ where they can look down at what happens on the vast stage.

 

The auditorium is lit by an artificial daylight as if in a film set. The live sounds from outside the theatre are amplified within.

 

All day a minotaur continuously fucks a hole in the stage.

 

All day African market holders sell reproduction handbags on square cloths on the stage.

 

All day a camera, being lowered from the fly tower, repeatedly penetrates a trapdoor on the stage. Each penetration reveals a different scene taking place beneath the stage that can be seen on screens in ‘the gods’. Each fragmented scene becomes an invocation. Each invocation is a reinterpretation of the eighty seven Orphic Hymns.

 

 

THE NIGHTS 

Open between 22.00 - 24.00

Some notes:

 

The audience use a door at the back of the theatre to enter the basement of the theatre. 

 

All night the howling Minotaurs Dub Disco can be heard coming from the subterranean bar lined with huge speakers. People dance wildly within it.

 

The miniature theatre has been repurposed as a sauna. The boxes around the auditorium are changing rooms with left clothes and baggage. In the centre of the stage an artificial camp fire burns. The space is dense with smoke.

 

From a prompt box in the floor a prompter announces lines that should be spoken. Cues. Responses to the daytime invocations amplified into the night.

 

All through the night the end of the minotaurs long penis thrusts in and out of the hole in the ceiling.

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