Written by and with Chiara Lagani | Drawings by Mara Cerri | Direction, Video, Music by Luigi De Angelis | Sound Design and Technical Supervision by Vincenzo Scorza | Organization by Maria Donnoli, Marco Molduzzi | Communication and Promotion by Maria Donnoli | A production by E Production/Fanny & Alexander.

Year : 2022

Service : Soundtrack

The story, based on the comic by Mara Cerri and Chiara Lagani of L’Amica Geniale, follows the friendship between two women, tracking their individual growth, how they influence each other, their emotions, and the conditions of distance and closeness that shape their relationship over the decades. Against this backdrop is the chorus of a city/world torn apart by the contradictions of the past, present, and a future whose harsh boundaries still struggle to clearly define themselves. The comic focuses on the childhood and adolescence of the protagonists, beginning with the foundational episode of their friendship: the two young girls, in a challenge to one another, throw their dolls into the depths of a dark basement. When they go to retrieve them, the dolls are gone. Believing that Don Achille, the boogeyman of their childhood, has stolen them, the girls one day find the courage to go and claim them.

Chiara Lagani performs Elena Ferrante’s texts on stage in the adaptation made for the comic, created alongside Mara Cerri. Behind her, animated drawings from the book run, bringing to life the moments evoked by the words of the story.

TOUR

• September 9, 2022: Intermittenze, Rocca di Riva, Riva del Garda (TN) – PREVIEW
• October 14, 2022: APP Ascoli Piceno Present, Teatro dei Filarmonici – DEBUT
• October 23, 2022: E vissero tutti, Biblioteca Malatestiana, Cesena
• October 26, 2022: Festival Prima Onda, Ecomuseo Mare Memoria Viva, Palermo
• October 28, 2022: MEME Festival, Teatro Masini, Faenza (RA)
• November 19, 2022: LabOratorio San Filippo Neri, Bologna
• November 25, 2022: Auditorium del Parco, L’Aquila
• November 26, 2022: Spazio Matta, Pescara
• December 2, 2022: Teatro Petrella, Longiano (FC)
• December 13, 2022: Teatri di Vetro, Teatro India, Rome
• February 23 and 24, 2023: Teatro Rasi, Ravenna
• March 18, 2023: Teatro Sociale, Novafeltria (RN)
• April 1, 2023: Teatro Massarenti, Molinella (BO)
• April 4 and 5, 2023: AMAT Chiesa dell’Annunziata, Pesaro
• May 20, 2023: Agorà Season, Villa Beatrice degli Aceri, Argelato (BO) (rescheduled)
• May 25, 2023: Cantieri Intermediali – Centro Universitario Teatrale, Catania
• June 8, 2023: DAMSLab, University of Bologna
• February 3, 2024: Teatro Manzoni, Calenzano (FI)
• March 3, 2024: Hangar Teatri, Trieste (TS)
• April 6, 2024: Agorà Season, Teatro Comunale, Argelato (BO)
• September 24, 2024: Hamburger Sprechwerk, Hamburg, Germany, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Hamburg and ATER Fondazione
• September 26, 2024: Teatro dell’Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Cologne, Cologne, Germany, in collaboration with ATER Fondazione
• October 15, 2024: Youth Space, Hong Kong, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Hong Kong and ATER Fondazione
• October 24, 2024: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Munich, Germany

ph. Fabio Fiandrini

PRESS REVIEW

ALESSANDRO CARLI, Fixing
THEA FARO, Unictmagazine
ILARIA CECCHINATO, Gagarin Magazine
SANDRA NISTRI, La Nazione

Seen for you at Petrella: “L’amica geniale a fumetti” by Cerri and Lagani, by Alessandro Carli | Fixing, December 6, 2022

Not always does someone on stage perceive what they are doing: pirandellianly, in fact, “those who live, when they live, do not see themselves: they live.” The excellent Chiara Lagani – playwright and founder of the theater company Fanny & Alexander – is no exception. At the end of the performance L’amica geniale a fumetti, which took place on the stage of the Teatro Petrella in Longiano on December 2, during the meeting with the audience (the graphic novel by Mara Cerri inspired by the first volume of Elena Ferrante’s work was presented), she called the mise en scène “a recital.” In reality, it is much more than that: firstly, because recitals and readings often have a lifeless quality and often bore the audience (this work, on the other hand, captivates you), and secondly, because Chiara’s interpretation transformed it into a complete, finished, and most importantly, emotional performance.

The minimalist setup – with a backdrop featuring projections of Mara Cerri’s drawings, a desk and a chair on the right side of the stage (from the audience’s perspective), and a few sheets of paper – proves to be a well-chosen one. The characters’ colors, but especially Chiara’s voice, “sketch” an evocative set design that takes the audience not only to the setting of the story – that post-war Naples, that neorealist Naples – but also inside and through the friendship between two girls, Lila and Elena (Lenù), different and unique in their own ways. What unites them is a challenge: the throwing of their beloved dolls into the grates of a building that seem like the teeth of an ogre. And an ogre, as it turns out, truly exists: Don Achille, huge and masked, who walks around with a bag in which he hides mysteries and terrors. Lila and Elena are convinced that Don Achille took the two dolls, and they go to reclaim them, facing him with great courage. “That gesture changed everything between us. Forever.”

But it is in the chapter of adolescence that their friendship becomes a truly happy love story, certainly as brilliant as the title suggests, but enriched by new sensory and emotional dimensions: the drawings, the voices, the streets that bring them closer together. One, in an apocryphal style reminiscent of Fabrizio De André, reveals to her friend her “virginity that turned red,” while the other starts to realize a dream, designing comfortable and elegant shoes, new ones that her parents – used to practicality – do not understand and scold her for. To be brilliant, you need two. Chiara and Mara, Lila and Elena, one hand meeting another hand. Two hearts that beat at the same rhythm. And whether that rhythm lasts for the duration of the performance – just under an hour – it doesn’t matter: once you start, you must simply walk together.

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L’amica geniale a fumetti, by Thea Faro | Unictmagazine, May 28, 2023

What better place than the theater to conclude the first edition of the Cantieri Intermediali festival?

At the end of the festival’s Dopolavoro section, dedicated to creativity and experimentation, the Ravenna-based company Fanny & Alexander arrived in Catania, hosted by the Centro Universitario Teatrale. As a perfect example of hybridization of artistic languages and remediation of expressive codes, Chiara Lagani, founder of the theater company, playwright, actress, and translator, brought to the stage of CUT the recital L’amica geniale a fumetti, based on the only graphic novel worldwide authorized by Elena Ferrante. For this project, she and illustrator Mara Cerri received the ALMA Special Animation Award in 2022.

The paths of the two artists had already crossed in the creation of I libri di Oz for Einaudi, and both had previously worked individually on Ferrante’s works, pages they “read and loved,” and in which, as Cerri reflects during the conversation following the performance moderated by Simona Scattina, “perhaps their future friendship was already embedded.”

In particular, the Ravenna group’s encounter with the narrative world of Lenù and Lila dates back to 2017, the year the Storia di un’amicizia project was born, which consists of three theater productions drawn from Ferrante’s saga.

The genesis of the project stems from Lagani’s desire to “continue to nurture the ghosts” that arose from reading Ferrante’s work, after discovering, despite her initial skepticism due to the author’s great editorial success, that she had been afflicted by what a documentary by Giacomo Durzi (in which Cerri also worked) aptly calls Ferrante fever.

The result of the recent collaboration between the actress and the comic book artist thus seems to be, above all, a tribute to the ‘invisible’ author from two of her passionate readers. The comic book appears to be designed to accompany, rather than replace, the reading of the tetralogy and acts as an interpretive tool that, by condensing L’amica geniale and adapting it to the new medium, highlights and amplifies, especially through Cerri’s soft and at times expressionist drawings, the main themes of the novel, now etched in collective memory, “revealing the narrative in depth.”

Based on these premises, Lagani’s idea of adding an extra link to the transmedia chain that has seen Ferrante’s work transcend the boundaries of the novel format – through radio, theater, television adaptations, and illustration – and now return in this new intermedial form to the theater space should be understood.

Lagani, in reopening the writer’s book, recovers parts of the text excluded from the comic’s script, using them to recount Cerri’s images while focusing especially on specific details.

On stage, she plays the role of the adult Elena Greco, who, upon hearing the news of her friend Raffaella Cerullo’s sudden disappearance – Lila to her – decides to challenge her one last time, just as they did when they were children, thwarting Lila’s will to erase all traces of herself and their friendship by recounting it: in a novel in the original Ferrante text, through drawings in the comic, and later in the performance.

On stage, Lagani-Elena sits on a stool in front of a desk, the only furniture in a deliberately minimal set. Behind her, a large screen displays a selection of Cerri’s illustrations, which serve as animated scenery as well as narrative tools, in the editing overseen by De Angelis, whose structure, as noted by Scattina, “was partly already embedded in Cerri’s pages.”

These illustrations, due to their sequence, closely resemble animation storyboards, which is fitting since the illustrator comes from the animation field.

The rhythm with which the comic’s panels follow one another is marked by a pulsing background music, perfectly synchronized with the verbal and physical rhythm of Lagani’s performance.

On the desk in front of her lie various objects, initially indistinct but soon revealed to be the childhood memories of the two “genius friends”: the pin Lila kept “like a gift from a fairy,” the cap to place “on the doll’s head like a hat,” the stone Lila threw at Enzo, the drawings of Cerullo-brand shoes.

Almost adopting the role of an investigator, Lagani-Elena shows these objects to the audience while recounting her childhood and adolescence (the titles of the two chapters of the recital), lived in the microcosm of a Neapolitan neighborhood, reconstructing key moments and giving voice to the various characters who were part of it, modulating her voice as if telling a fairy tale.

Though absent from the objects on the desk, in the intermedial window of the large screen, the dolls of Lenù and Lila can be seen, central elements in Ferrante’s work as the protagonists’ alter egos. In this respect, the black dress worn by the actress on stage doesn’t seem coincidental, as it is the same one she wears in the Storia di un’amicizia performances after the transformation from child to doll.

This transformation is echoed both in the comic and in the recital, where in the conclusion, Lila’s fainting is likened to the fall of the dolls into a dark basement, that is, in the girls’ childhood imagination, the dreaded “black bag of Don Achille.”

Thus, making the dolls “liminal objects of the plot,” according to Tiziana De Rogatis’ interpretation, Lagani’s recital reproduces the circular structure of the tetralogy, also giving prominence to those toys that, as symbols of the archetype of the child’s gaze, connect Ferrante’s work with the expressive matrix of Fanny & Alexander: the world of childhood and creative imagination, which is already clearly evident in their Bergman-inspired name.

Before the recital, the book Immaginazioni Intermediali. Le Regie Liriche di Fanny & Alexander by Laura Pernice was presented in the evocative Teatro di Piazza Scammacca, with Chiara Lagani participating in the Cantieri Intermediali festival.

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In the Shadows of the Real. The Brilliant Friend in Comics, by Ilaria Cecchinato | Gagarin Magazine, January 30, 2024

A tetralogy beloved by the public yet viewed with suspicion by the “small old world” of artists and intellectuals, The Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante finds new life in the language of comics thanks to the love and care of actress and playwright Chiara Lagani and illustrator Mara Cerri.

Published by Coconino, the first volume of the graphic novel has now been translated and distributed in 10 countries, and recently reached the United States. The story of Lila and Lenù, their relationship, and the Naples of the 1950s-60s comes to life in the colors and drawings of Mara Cerri, never didactic but always evocative of the shadows of reality; and in the adaptation of the text by Chiara Lagani, who has already worked with The Brilliant Friend in three theatrical episodes of The Story of a Friendship.

How and when did your collaboration begin?

Mara Cerri: “We met at the Rasi Theater in Ravenna. I was there on the invitation of the Mirada Association, namely Gianluca Costantini and Elettra Stamboulis. I already knew the work of Fanny & Alexander, but it was at that occasion that I personally met Chiara. She told me she had liked one of my posters and that it reminded her of the characters from the Oz books, on which she had already started working. We parted ways saying maybe one day we could do something together. Years later, Chiara asked me to meet because she had a contract with Einaudi to translate all fourteen of L. Frank Baum’s books and wanted me to illustrate the project. At first, I was hesitant because I thought I was being asked for traditional, faithful illustrations. However, Chiara made me and the publisher understand that she wasn’t looking for a didactic representation of Oz, but drawings that capture the soul. When I started working on the illustrations, I immediately felt at ease, as it was precisely the kind of exploration I wanted to pursue. This was the beginning of everything.”

Chiara, what sparked your interest in images and drawings, and why did you choose Mara?

Chiara Lagani: “The link between images, drawings, and storytelling is an interest that Luigi (De Angelis, ed.) and I have had since we started creating together. From the start, in our projects, we gather words, sounds, images… all equally important pieces, like a Warburgian atlas. The proposal from Einaudi was for the Millenni series (which was originally conceived by Cesare Pavese): I knew that illustrations would play an important part in the publications, and they would propose names to us. I still remember how it happened: I was sitting with Mauro Bersani and Monica Aldi, who showed me portfolios of their illustrators. I showed them Mara’s images, pointing out the Oz characters I saw in her drawings. I was ecstatic because Millenni was The Book for me—my grandfather had many of them, and I have childhood memories tied to those volumes. The idea excited me, and proposing to someone to collaborate on such a book seemed exceptional, like winning the lottery. But then I found myself facing Mara, who looked at me as if I were saying something trivial, explaining that she would never illustrate ‘the aunt’s checkered tablecloth.’ At first, I thought I had said something wrong, but then we understood each other, and Mara became one of my closest friends.”

Speaking of friendship, let’s dive into your work on Elena Ferrante’s The Brilliant Friend. You both worked independently on the author’s texts: Mara on The Beach at Night, and Chiara with the theatrical adaptation of the tetralogy, The Story of a Friendship. How did you first encounter Ferrante’s work, and where did your collaboration meet?

Mara: “I started reading Ferrante around the same time I first met Chiara in Ravenna, on the suggestion of a dear friend. Besides the books, I also watched the films adapted from her works, like Troubling Love by Martone or The Days of Abandonment by Faenza. What struck me were both the writings in La frantumaglia (E. Ferrante, Edizioni e/o, 2016), and the theme of the relationship with the mother, which resonated with my own experience. After I began reading her, I became so passionate that I found myself in a whirlpool. She has a captivating power stronger than reality, almost like there’s something so true within it that one must pass through it. Then one day, at the small and medium publishing fair in Rome, Giovanni Nucci from Edizioni e/o proposed that I illustrate The Beach at Night. It was an incredible coincidence: I was reading it, loving it, and sharing it with friends. It was very powerful. Despite it being a children’s book, I delved into the unsettling elements that emerged in it, unfiltered. Later, I worked on animations for a documentary by Giacomo Durzi, Ferrante Fever, with Magda Guidi, an animator I collaborate with for cinema. Simultaneously, I started working with Chiara. I remember the trips to Turin, the meetings with Einaudi, Chiara telling me on the train about her incredible project of bringing the tetralogy to the theater. Ferrante was already a name on everyone’s lips, and there was definitely a risk involved. However, I immediately felt Chiara’s authenticity in approaching this author for what she truly wanted to explore.”

Chiara: “I read Ferrante at a late stage, after all the volumes of The Brilliant Friend were out. I started almost reluctantly, pushed by my mother, because, with the typical snobbery that often characterizes our little niche, the fact that it was a globally successful book made me skeptical. I took a couple of the volumes with me on vacation, thinking that if I liked the first one, I would stop there. Instead, it was an epiphany. I believe Ferrante is one of the few living writers, if not the only one, who will go down in history for an extremely sophisticated use of language. What struck me the most was the powerful sense of identification. For years, we’ve been touring with The Story of a Friendship at the theater, and I’ve often seen spectators of all ages, in pairs, with their copies in hand, pointing to each other and saying, ‘She’s my brilliant friend.’ This is a phenomenon I find moving and think shows the author’s ability to capture an archetype. Personally, I saw my brilliant friend in another theater artist, Fiorenza Menni, with whom I shared stories since we were children. Initially, I rejected the idea of bringing it to the stage because it seemed like a gamble. But when something sticks with you and you can’t shake it off, you have to confront it. So, after a year, I went to Fiorenza, asked her to read the book, and she agreed to take on the weight of identification. With Luigi’s help, we brought it to the stage.”

The text has undergone an adaptation process for theater, illustration, and comics. How did you work on it? Did you focus on particular aspects of Ferrante’s work? If so, which ones, and why?

Chiara: “Regarding the theatrical adaptation, we had to create a synthesis, and that was the most challenging part. At some point, I felt it was right to develop my dramaturgy through three key episodes: the dolls, the collage the two friends create that disintegrates Lila’s image, and the disappearance of Tina. From these core elements, I thought the entire story could be reconstructed. The strength of Ferrante lies in her ability to convey a deeply powerful sense through a few unforgettable scenes. The decision to adapt The Brilliant Friend into a comic book wasn’t our idea but came from Giovanni Ferrara, editorial director of Coconino. One day, Mara and I went to visit him to propose a graphic novel on Ortese (we’re not giving up, we’ll do it eventually!), and he counter-proposed the comic version of The Brilliant Friend. This is a huge project for all four books, and we are already working on the second. The idea is to translate all four volumes into comic form. While in the theater I was free to make even radical choices, here I feel a sort of duty to completeness, since this is the only comic version that will ever be made, and it has already been sold in about ten foreign countries. It’s a delicate task, and not just done by the two of us; there’s a whole team behind it at Coconino Press.”

Mara, earlier you mentioned how your style doesn’t just represent but seeks to capture something else. The text—especially Ferrante’s—often hides many ambiguities. The unsaid is felt more on an emotional level than rationally. How do you capture this “invisible,” and how does it translate into your drawings? Do you use a special technique, and why?

Mara: “What you say about Ferrante’s invisible is beautiful. For me, it’s also linked to childhood. Returning to The Beach at Night: I have a background in illustrating children’s books, but initially, I struggled because my style is somewhat unsettling, whereas as adults, we want to see childhood as innocent and reassuring. However, childhood is a time when, in the dark and shadows, something unknown is kept, still becoming, the seed of impulses that are not our own nor our parents’, but aspects absorbed from the external environment. It’s a ‘being in-between’ stage, neither fully protected nor fully adult. This is how I understand Ferrante’s work, which contains mysteries and shadows without explanations. I let the drawings speak for themselves, allowing the reader to interpret. The shadow is present in my work, in the soft shapes, in the choice of colors—especially the blue or green tones which signify something more ‘complicated.’ I also used a pencil technique, which I typically avoid, to add a slight roughness that represents the reality of the Neapolitan world. But the drawing is always contained in softness, as Ferrante’s work always gives a sense of ’emotional purity.'”

Would you say that the invisible or the shadow is also part of your style, Chiara, in your textual approach?

Chiara: “Absolutely. Writing is an act of knowing and unknowing at the same time. There are areas in Ferrante’s work where I also feel a sort of loss of the ‘personal.’ I’ve often noticed that, when I was creating with Luigi and doing a dramaturgical adaptation, we tried not to make decisions for the characters. This non-interference, this respect for the shadow, allowed us to focus on feelings and not on explanations.”

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L’Amica geniale becomes a comic: “I bring you inside Ferrante’s books,” by Sandra Nistri | La Nazione, February 3, 2024

“L’Amica geniale as a comic.” The novels of the mysterious Elena Ferrante have achieved record results both in bookstores and on the small screen, but a comic book adaptation is undoubtedly original. The performance, a production by Fanny & Alexander, written by Chiara Lagani who interprets the comic’s texts, while the audience is immersed in the drawings by Mara Cerri, will be on stage tonight at 9:15 PM at the Teatro Manzoni in Calenzano in collaboration with the Fondazione Toscana Spettacolo.

Chiara, how did the idea for this unique show come about?

“The show is part of a broader project that Fanny & Alexander created around Ferrante’s tetralogy, starting with a theatrical production that debuted in two separate years and later reassembled the four books. Then came the unexpected proposal for a graphic novel adaptation by a renowned graphic novel publisher, Coconino Press, connected to Ferrante’s books. We were caught off guard because they were acquiring exclusive rights for the comic that would be distributed worldwide. At some point, like I do with editorial projects, I decided to bring it to the theater, and Mara and I thought, ‘Why not create a format where the audience can enter the book but also receive a three-dimensional suggestion?’ So, we asked Luigi De Angelis to guide us in this process, and that’s how this production came about, which has toured a lot.”

So the audience finds itself between two different suggestions…

“Yes, the audience is immersed in both words and images. I perform excerpts from the tetralogy, and behind the audience, animated images highlight what the protagonist in the books is saying. By the way, this is a performance that can work in both theater and literary contexts, such as at literature festivals, because the set is very adaptable.”

How did your love for Ferrante’s books begin?

“In reality, I read the tetralogy quite late; I’m one of the late readers, perhaps even driven by the snobbery that, especially in Italy, we often have toward things that sell a lot. Usually, we are biased, and we are wrong because sometimes things succeed for a reason. My mother insisted that I read it, and I took the first two volumes on vacation, which I devoured, regretting not having brought the others. That’s when I fell prey to the ‘Ferrante fever’ that has infected millions of people.”