Biennale Teatro 2023
Emerald
“No one thinks of winter when the grass is green”
Rudyard Kipling
Our Western societies have based their vision of unlimited development on the aberrant ideology of man’s presumed omnipotence before the elements that supposedly constitute the universe, omitting the essential: we are not before the world, but in the world, in a relationship of interdependence. Today we are assessing the ill-fated consequences of such a view. What are we collectively doing about it?
With scarce generosity towards Nature that surrounds us, not much. It is no longer enough to protest against the damage being done to the ecosystem by the uncivil hand of man, the time has come to (re)think the universe above and beyond relationships of dominion and subordination; to challenge the sterile contradistinction between Nature and Culture and to renew the dialogue that we had interrupted with them; to repair the bonds that join the body to earth, reactivating our primordial connection with this so direly mistreated Planet; to let ourselves be overwhelmed by the searingly authentic song of the Earth which for three and a half billion years has borne witness to a fragile balance; and finally to put Man back in the place he deserves, encouraging him to be more humble because his is only one species among an infinity of others, a small part of a large whole that has preceded and will survive him, a brief fragment of history.
The time has also come for Theatre to take inventory, in the artistic spirit that distinguishes it, of our anxieties and shortcomings in the face of future environmental transformations, to become a sounding board for these urgent and vital questions.