The Trial for the Donkey’s Shadow

Music Theatre
2017 ︎

Written by
Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Directed by
Alan Alpenfelt

Dramaturg
Simona Gonella

With
Nello Provenzano
Adele Raes
Ulisse Romanò
Massimiliano Zampetti
Adalgisa Vavassori

Live Music
Gabriele Marangoni

Sound
Enrico Mangione

Lights
Andrea Borzatta

Co-production
LAC Lugano

Using binaural sound techniques, performers and noisemakers, Alan Alpenfelt and his team revisit the Swiss author's apocalyptic text, staging a captivating, psychedelic and stimulating performance.

Dürrenmatt re-tells in a tragicomic key the story of the real trial of a donkey's shadow that took place in the ancient - and now destroyed - Greek city of Abdera. The spark that ignites the unstoppable sequence of events starts when a dentist, Strutione, rents a donkey for an urgent operation outside the city but the blazing heat of the plain forces him to sit in the donkey's shadow. An argument ensues between him and the donkey’s owner Anthrax, who accuses him of having paid for the donkey but not for its shadow: the conflict degenerates into a struggle for supreme ideals involving the whole population, political and religious institutions and concluding in an apocalyptic finale.

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Funded by
Republic and Canton of Ticino
Fondazione Dürrenmatt-Kerr
Ernst Göhner Stiftung

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Past events

Teatro Litta
Milan, I
13.10.2018
Site

Teatro Foce
Lugano, CH
23-24.1.2018
Site

Teatro Foce
Lugano, CH
12-14.1.2017