scrabble for 6 players, piano, ondes Martenot and sound devices

• Concept: Chiara Lagani and Luigi de Angelis
• Direction, set and lighting design: Luigi de Angelis
• Dramaturgy and costumes: Chiara Lagani
• Photographs: Enrico Fedrigoli
• Sound devices: Mirto Baliani
• Video images: A.Zapruder filmmakersgroup
• Visual effects: p-bart.com
• Puzzle consultant: Stefano Bartezzaghi
• With: Matteo Ramon Arevalos (piano), Paola Baldini, Marco Cavalcoli, Luigi de Angelis, Chiara Lagani, Sara Masotti, Francesca Mazza, Bruno Perrault (ondes Martenot)
• Scenery and technical realisation: Giovanni Cavalcoli and Antonio Rinaldi, with Âniko Ferreira da Silva, Sara Masotti, Simone Gardini, Rosa Anna Rinaldi
• Tailoring: Laura Graziani Alta Moda
• Promotion: Sergio Carioli, Marco Molduzzi
• Press office: Marco Molduzzi
• Logistic: Sergio Carioli
• Administration: Antonietta Sciancalepore, Marco Cavalcoli
• Production: Fanny & Alexander, KunstenFESTIVALdesArts, La Rose des Vents-Scène Nationale de Villeneuve d’Ascq, Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Espace Malraux-Scène Nationale de Chambéry et de la Savoie, with a contribution from EniPower and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna
• Thanks to Electa – Antichità di Maria Carla Costa, Modisteria Anna Maria, Tiro a Segno Nazionale Ravenna, Farmacia Dradi, Oddone Baroncini, Gerardo Gridelli, Nina Muffolini, Venerina e Adelmo Masotti, Loretta Masotti, Paula Noah de Angelis, Agnese Arevalos, Filippo Zanzani, Anna Maria Bollettieri, Elisabetta Rivalta.
• Special thanks to Thierry Thomson.

Year : 2004

The excerpts from Vladimir Nabokov’s works, translated in Italian by Margherita Crepax, are used in accordance with The Vladimir Nabokov Estate

The rebuses are used by the kind permission of La Settimana Enigmistica – All rights reserved

Ardis II is: a party game, a theatrical game, a game of patience, a word-play, a game of chance, a game of chess across the novel Ada, a play, a double game (a game of mysteries, a game of dreams). The players (les acteurs, the actors, gli attori) are passionate decipherers of enigmas, athletes (of the game, of the novel), dreamers (visionary, “viso in aria”, face uplifted).

The subject of their dreams is an image like any other. The player doesn’t take its place, he doesn’t live it. He only personifies it. He doesn’t always and necessarily convey to it all the information at his disposal, and he may tremble at the sight of this ghost incautiously moving against an impending danger, a ghost representing him, a ghost which he can partly identify himself with. He follows it as a spectator at the theatre watches the heroes (Ada? Van?) draw near to the fatal curtain concealing their own romance.

The dream’s image is full and empty, it’s an enigma, a rebus. This image dwells in the show, a fleeting spark continuously appearing and disappearing. This image becomes essence. The dreamer (a spectator?) lends his own existence to its simulacrum, to its story: from that moment on, it’s necessary that he lives somewhere and somehow, after all.

The images form up in queer novels (Ardis I? Ardis II?), but their continuity is never lacking. So the heart of the matter is: which is the governing criterium of the show? Who will explain to us that the images don’t appear in open order? That they’re linked together into related stories and vicissitudes…?