Tiago Rodrigues' 'Gioie e dolori nella vita delle giraffe' at Teatro delle Passioni, Modena

Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues (born 1977) made his Italian debut with 'Gioie e dolori nella vita delle giraffe' at Teatro delle Passioni in Modena in 2018. The play, which premiered at the Festival d'Avignon in summer 2017, had already been a well-known text in Portugal since 2011. Directed by Teodoro Bonci Del Bene, the Italian production featured Carolina Cangini, Martin Chishimba, Dany Greggio, and Jacopo Trebbi. The work blends writing (including journalistic, cinematic, and television styles) with dance languages, having collaborated with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. The narrative is modeled on 'The Wizard of Oz,' but with a gray, suburban setting. The play deconstructs the fairy tale structure, emptying it to its bones and refilling it with linguistic games reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Alice. The protagonist speaks of herself in the third person, creating a gap between image and word akin to Joseph Kosuth's conceptual art. The work offers multiple layers: subcultures and underground aesthetics, a divergence between character and speech, and a temporal estrangement from representation. The linearity of Oz gives way to a Miyazaki-like city inhabited by giraffes and men who, like giraffes, 'seem like imaginary animals.'