© Zani-Casadio
Quando la vita ti viene a trovare
Dialogue between Seneca and Lucretius
by Ivano Dionigi
performance and direction Enzo Vetrano and Stefano Randisi
with Gianni Trovalusci flute and sound tubes
and Roberto Bellatalla double bass
original music Alessandro Cipriani
set and costume design Mela Dell’Erba
video and lighting design Antonio Rinaldi
production Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione
in collaboration with Ravenna Festival, Cooperativa Le tre corde – Compagnia Vetrano/Randisi
Italian premiere
As Ivano Dionigi maintains, the strength of the classics is in the fact that they were questioning the same fundamentals we are still questioning today. Lucretius dealt with politics, religion, happiness, love and death. So did Seneca a hundred years later, but from a very different point of view.
The former pursued otium and secluded life: to him, religion resulted from ignorance of the laws of nature and physics, and caused fear and troubles. The latter was an advocate of negotium, and combined active politics with civil religion. A similar duplicity exists today —politics vs anti-politics, faith vs understanding, otium vs negotium— and is now staged by two of the most intelligent contemporary playwrights and actors, who try to understand, delve deep and investigate the relationships between things.
