The short novel is narrated by an elderly lawyer who relates the story of the strangest man he has ever known: Bartleby, a scrivener that he hired and who, little by little, started to change his world.

At first, Bartleby produces a large volume of work. But one day, when asked to help proofread a document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his perpetual response to every request: "I would prefer not to." From that moment on Bartleby starts to perform fewer and fewer tasks, until eventually stopping doing anything aside from occupying his place in the office.

bartleby

We want to start from this simple story set at the middle of the 19th century in a basement office in New York, in order to investigate the deep significance of the main charachter's gesture and to find a way to translate its meanings and consequences into a visual/sound performance.

bartleby

Bartleby is not a man who's in line with his times. At a certain point of his life, he suddenly decides that he will not adapt anymore himself to the requests his society is posing him. He stops to be adherent. He starts to create little sacks of resistance against a linear, unstoppable, productive mode of being.

Mainly, by a revolution in language. Using a formula, and repeating it over and over. A simple formula that uses the conditional (the time of the possibility) to start slowly subverting the world.

We want to translate this human fight into a sound score, completely created and performed live by two performers/musicians on stage. Complexity vs reduction. Partiality vs fullness. Reality vs utopy.

How to return on stage this growing dualism? What does it mean to translate into music this fight, this revolution made by language? How to stage and perform this insurrection made of slowness, withdrawal, exhaustion which confronts itself with a world built on energy, power and production?

Of course, silence would look like the simpliest of the answers. How to fight the cacophony of our contemporary world, if not with silence. But silence is the non-existence of sound. And Bartleby does not stage a mere non-existence. He’s not someone who goes away, who decides to leave society and disappear: he remains present in his place, and by remaining present, he offers and alternative. He stays. But in a different way. In musical terms, his gesture might be compared to what the ground noise is to our ears, a "bruit de fond" as the philosopher Michel Serres describes it: "Le bruit de fond est peut-être le fond de l' être. Il ne cesse jamais, il est illimité, il est continuel, perpétuel, inaltérable. Combien fait-il faire de bruit pour imposer silence au bruit?" Or maybe it’s repetition that we have to investigate: repetition as starting point to create alternative, like in Pierre Bastien's performances? Refraining as starting point for a critical and creative moment? This are only few of the questions we’re starting to pose ourselves at the beginning of this journey of research.

On stage there will be a visual-sound installation, lively made by a video-designer and a sound-designer. A big aluminum-wooden structure that reminds of the screen behind which Bartleby hides and the Manhattan skyline at the same time.

For a contemporary experience of simple story-telling.

direction

CLAUDIA SORACE

sound and words

RICCARDO FAZI

music

V. L. WILDPANNER

video

MARIA ELENA FUSACCHIA

bartleby

Claudia SORACE graduates in theatre direction in 2004 at Civic Scuola d'Arte Drammatica "Paolo Grassi" in Milan, Italy, where she studied with directors and teachers like Gabriele Vacis, Caden Manson, Kuniaki Ida, Dominique Pitoiset. From 2004 to 2006 she is an assistant director of Gabriele and Caden Manson (Big Art Group).

In 2006, together with dramaturg Riccardo FAZI she founds the company Muta Imago, for which she conceives and directs the following shows: Hyperion (2015), Pictures From Gihan (2013), Displace (2011), Displace #1 Red Rage (2010), Madeleine (2009), Napoli. Primo pass belle cittá di sotto (2009), Lev (2008), (a+b)3 (2007) and the projects Art you lost? (2004), Q-Lab (2014) which have all toured nationally and internationally in Europe and Middle East. In 2011 she won the prize for Best Direction at the XXIX Fadjr Festival in Iran; in 2009 she won the Ubu Special Prize and the Critic's Prize in Italy.

In her work the investigation about the relationship between the human being, space and time has a main role.

find more

www.mutaimago.com