Rita Frongia, dramatist, actress, director, longtime author for Claudio Morganti, presents the diptych Étoile & Star, two plays where she felt the desire to work as choreographer with two performers with a long and articulated artistic background: the actor Stefano Vercelli, who has worked, among others, with Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba, and the American dancer Teri Weikel, who has collaborated with internationally renowned artists and since 2002 has been teaching the Feldenkreis Method applied to dance.  

After long years on stage, when dancers’ balance gets uncertain and their bones stick out like branches in search of light, and virtues and youth can no longer be displayed, they cut to the bone, investigate subtle, inexpressible details, evoke lifetime ghosts and wish they could dance as they never would have imagined. Such is the desire. When merging an artist’s long life with the story they wish to embody (or the ghost they try to conjure up), a third story pops out: a human portrait. What one needs is a story gracious enough to hide itself, a dramaturgy respecting the viewers’ intelligence and not suggesting interpretations. One needs the artist to be present, to investigate time and shapes on stage moment after moment, so that the unspeakable can be imagined and the invisible be seen.