DECAMERON 2.0

The Story We Sell Ourselves In Order To Live

DECAMERON 2.0 is a multidisciplinary performance based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece. A group of travellers share stories on the road. Storytelling becomes a sanctuary from the troubling reality, a technologically-enhanced illusion has taken over reality. Letizia Renzini deconstructs the original Decameron while staying true to its lyricism, irony and lucidity. 13th Century ballads and madrigals are artfully combined with state-of-the art projection, contemporary dance and live music, for a true feast for the senses.

DECAMERON 2.0 – What is left of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron today?

Our once enchanting world has become global on the surface, while deep down everything has remained the same. Only updated and refreshed, like an unstable operating system with its never-ending uploads.

In turbulent times humans tend to escape reality, taking shelter in the easiest way available. To protect our spirits and please our senses, we manufactured virtual realities and designed improved versions of ourselves. We craved control. But we’re losing the grip, and everything’s slowly spinning away. The beautiful images we’ve surrounded ourselves with are flickering, and a bleaker picture slowly creeps in: a savage technocratic world regulated by cut-throat capitalism, rampant individualism, lack of community values and death.

As the very concept of “reality” becomes fleeting, it is what we tell each other (and ourselves) that counts. Like the group of travellers in the Decameron, we tell each other stories to keep the horror away, be it the Medieval black plague or a contemporary plagued society. Like exiles with no promised land to go to, we need stories to keep moving toward a non-specified “forward”, be it an inner- or outer- place, on- or off-line. As long as we keep wondering, questioning, and spinning our tales.

GALLERY

CAST

from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
concept, artistic and stage direction, video Letizia Renzini
original texts and dramaturgy Theodora Delavault
choreography Marina Giovannini
music score, text-film Yannis Kyriakides
collaboration music score Andy Moor

with Theodora Delavault, Marina Giovannini, Jari Boldrini, Maurizio Giunti, Lucrezia Palandri
live electronics Yannis Kyriakides
electric guitar, baritone guitar Andy Moor
live camera Letizia Renzini
on video Lore Binon, Monica Piseddu, Monica Demuru

video shooting, production and compositing Raffaele Cafarelli/ Red-Fish
light design Moritz Zavan
costumes Boboutic
scene drawings Lorenzo Pazzagli

The song Muoviti, Amore, e vattene a Messere, on a text by G. Boccaccio, is produced by Drone 126

project organization Luisa Zuffo
production Teatro Metastasio di Prato
in collaboration with Spoleto61 Festival dei 2Mondi