"A dialogue between Pinter and Tarantino, skillfully combining the most contemporary flavours of Pinter with the most pronounced genres drifts of the second one."
written by Chiara Arrigoni | directed by Daniele Santisi | with Chiara Arrigoni, Andrea Ferrara | costumes Giuliana Musso | Set design Paola Arcuria | studio version: 2018 | year of production: 2022
SCENA&POESIA NATIONAL PRIZE 2018 | II PRIZE
SELECTED FOR IN-DIVENIRE FESTIVAL 2018
"GIOVANI REALTÀ DEL TEATRO" NATIONAL PRIZE 2018 | ACADEMY DIRECTOR'S AWARD
VOCI DEL TEATRO GIOVANILE 2019 AWARD | FINALIST
OFFICIAL SELECTION 2021 Live Streaming Theatre | Spazio Rossellini
Two professional cleaners are getting ready to clean up a huge stain on the floor. It seems an oppressive routine they’re used to, but little by little some creepy details are unveiled about what it’s clearly not a job like any other: they don’t know their names and they can’t, in fact, tell anyone about what they do. As a matter of fact, their humble task seems surrounded by a halo of mystery. While the conversation is getting more and more heated, we finally understand what their job is really about: they remove blood stains from isolated basements that a mysterious organization uses to commit murders. So here we are, caught up in the same scenario of Harold Pinter’s play The Dumb Waiter: a sad room where two professional killers were waiting for an unknown person they are paid to kill. We’re exploring another side of the same criminal set-up, what happens when the killers finish their work leaving the crime scene full of blood. While we get more details about how they got involved and, then, how they became aware of their job's real nature, the discussion turns into an intense argument, especially when they finally face the only question that really matters: am I responsible of what happens here? Can I just do my part in silence without feeling implicated in a wider and evil system?
We're in a suspended time of our contemporary era, in a hidden place far away from humanity, as it seems, but it can be hidden right under our feet. It could be the same place where Ben and Gus from Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter used to ask themselves who was supposed to clear up after they finished their job, leaving behind a floor sometimes full of blood. We’re right in the backstage of a criminal scenario, but the atmosphere isn’t less cruel: we don’t see the actual violence of a murder and the two of them seem ordinary people like one of us, with no blood on their hands, but they are involved into the “system” as well: once you accept the whole compromise, you’re in, and it’s impossible to get away.
« The play is a dialogue between Pinter and Tarantino, skillfully combining the most contemporary flavours of Pinter with the most pronounced "genre drifts" of the second one. A perfectly coherent clash between two halves that used to be complementary, but now turn out to be irreconcilable within an absurd situation with no exit.»
(Recensito.net)
«It’s a well realized formal experiment, even rich for its contents, which meditates on a crucial XX Century issue: the banality of evil - which allowed to build organizations capable of atrocious horrors and yet perfectly efficient.»
(Saltinaria.it)
first version debut during Contaminazioni Festival 2018, Teatro India of Rome (September 2018)
