original playwriting by Livello 4
directed by Alessandro Sanmartin
with Marco Pasquale, Maria Perardi, Anna Peretto, Alessandro Sanmartin and Leonardo Zaupa
sound/light designer Angela Marangon
Theatre is the vaccine.
A controlled poison that we inject ourselves in an attempt to save ourselves from death.
A collective therapy of regeneration, a ritual metamorphosis that allows us to return to the world stronger, immune because more aware. Empathy and civic consciousness are the antibodies.
This is what open theatres are for. This is the cure we desperately need.
That's why our association is called "Livello 4": the 4th level is the highest degree of biological risk, the stage at which we deal with diseases for which there is no antidote. And creative contagion is our idea of community.
The human condition in this last century has undergone unprecedented transformations. We have become “digital swarms”, a multitude of solitudes incapable of action, eternally sedated and controlled spectators, easy consumers, slaves of algorithms. The “society of the spectacle” has turned into a “performance society”. Now, we are the product, always “on stage”, spectators-consumers defined by followers and likes; and, while we worry about appearing, having an opinion on everything, and proving that we are part of the virtual agorà, the big communication companies use our data to ”improve their offer”.
Users are soon led to polarise, so that their lifestyles and opinions are catalogued, lumped together with similar ones, amplified, making any contradiction completely disappear from their social walls. And then, what has been repressed, hidden, somatized, in order to appear more and more performative, explodes like vomit and becomes obtuseness, rage, political extremism and violence. Here come fake news, shitstorms, haters, trolls, cyberbullies and a whole world of comments and visions without restraint, without modesty, without culture.
And the truth has already given way to post-truth. It has already happened. We have already changed. It happened while accepting cookies, while watching Black Mirror, while buying Alexa on Amazon. All that's left of our identity are the two initial letters (ID).
“(...) In the near future, algorithms will make it almost impossible for people to observe the reality that concerns and constitutes them. Algorithms will decide for us who we are and what we should know about ourselves (...)”21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Y. N. Harari
Photos by Margherita Fantini.
