Angel of History

Original title L'Angelo della Storia

Première 2022

Running time 1 hour 25 minutes. No intermission.

*** UBU Award for Best Italian Theatre Show 2022 ***
*** UBU Award nomination Playwright of the Year 2022 ***


Conception and direction Sara Bonaventura, Claudio Cirri, Daniele Villa
Dramaturgy Daniele Villa
Light design Marco Santambrogio
Costumes Ettore Lombardi
Sound design Simone Arganini
Dance creation Giulio Santolini

Cast
Sara Bonaventura, Claudio Cirri, Lorenza Guerrini, Daniele Pennati, Giulio Santolini

"It’s not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on the past, rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation."
Walter Benjamin

In his latest work, philosopher Walter Benjamin describes an angel who flies with his gaze turned to the past and his back to the future: buildings and ideologies rubbles accumulate before his eyes [musical instruments at the bottom of the ocean, malfunctioning radars, beached whales] and the angel would like to stop and mend those rubbles, but a storm swells his wings and drags him relentlessly forward [dead babies, statues in Antarctica, fluorescent rabbits]: we call this storm progress. Although the angel observes the succession of events [hands on piano keys, atomic mushrooms, postcards in the jungle] and tries to resist the storm, he cannot stop and intervene, he cannot glue the pieces together again and rebuild a shared reality, he cannot do absolutely nothing to help us – maybe only because angels don’ t exist [cyanide cocktails, irrational numbers, tales around the fire]. What other conscious being could try to recompose something broken, take stories apart and – flying or not – finally turn around to project their gaze forward?