IMAGINATION: CATASTROPHE AND SALVATION
by Åste Retrøen

Organismi Genericamente Modificati
an ironic, humoristic perspective on the "hopeless" human condition.

This funny though uneasy fable takes place in a space of indeterminable appearance alluding to a laboratory. A musician (Mauro D'Alessandro) imprisoned in a cage is desperately drumming on the cage walls while an unscrupulous scientist and his doubtful assistant (Maurizio Zacchigna and Marco Solari) are carrying out more or less successful genetic experiments.

O.G.M. is not a banally moralising introspection into a "terrifying" world of science running ahead of us. On the contrary, this vast and striking choice of fragments from the cannon (most of them quite old) reawakens our conscience of an ancient topic: the human dream of complete control, of becoming God and subsequently of obtaining immortality.

O.G.M. truly invites us to reflect upon a quite concrete problem: what is the motivation behind acts of human imagination? Is it about idealist strivings towards noble values or about personal profit? The performance is also a challenge to conceive this problem as a symptom of the human condition - a condition in which a crazy dream of supremacy is an integral part. Hence the paradox of human imagination is revealed. While our urge to materialize what we imagine frequently ends in catastrophe, imagination as such may nevertheless be our sole salvation from resignation, from nihilism.

I would say, we have been saved from salvation and redeemed from redemption through our ability to imagine, invent and tell stories. After this, what remains? Nothing? Almost. Only the vast profile of the night and the buzzing that recalls us to the infinite time of dying, our breath panting on in the darkness. Dying on. No more no less. No. Less. Less to die. Ever less. And yet into this night comes a voice, an injunction...: - Imagine!

So I see the challenge of O.G.M. So is the imperative of theatre and so is ours: Imagine! For,..., we are cursed, cursed by the need for narrative, by the resorts of fable, flayed alive by memory. Hence we must attempt to people the void, to presume to be saved... Because we cannot sit quietly in a room, because we have to live and invent, knowing that invention is the wrong word, as indeed is life.

O.G.M. is all along through all its elements an invitation to such acts of imagination and reflection.

(Citations from "Very little...,Almost nothing" , by Simon Critchley)

OGM
Organismi Genericamente Modificati


text and direction
Marco Solari

actors
Maurizio Zacchigna
Marco Solari

Live music
Mauro D’Alessandro

Set designer and video-projections
Martin Clausen

Light designer
Valerio Geroldi

Soundtrack and sound operator
Paolo Modugno

Rehearsal assistent
Paola Traverso

Recorded voices
Lea Barletti and Corinna Geroldi

production
Centro Spettacoli Teatrali (Compagnia Solari-Vanzi)

Two men - Hamlet and Buckingham - are the keepers of an artificial garden (designed by Martin Clausen), which is the place for the growth of huge experimental eggs.
Hamlet is the guide and the master, while Buckingham (the name of a character out of a novel by E.A.Poe) is his assistent. Their role is to control and to check the results of the experiments, theirselves being the outcomes of genetic and surgical modifications.
During the performance, they have time enough to express their doubts, fears and feelings. In fact they both are also a combination of cultural and historical ‘pieces’, so that once in a while they will somehow change their personality through the evocation of fragments of their memory.
Live music (by Mauro D’Alessandro), expecially drumming, counterpoints the action, while the soundtrack (by Paolo Modugno) amplifies noises coming from the present communications (Internet connections, phones, radiowaves and so on) with recorded voices quoting ‘news’ from SF and scientific publications.
The text is based on fragments, sometimes even ‘cells’ from different contexts: from the Upanishads and Empedocles to the Bible, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Leopardi, Shakespeare, E.A.Poe, Calderòn de la Barca, etc. All this ‘material’ is woven with dialogues and more abstract parts written by Marco Solari with the collaboration of Maurizio Zacchigna.
The aim of Organismi Genericamente Modificati is to freely play with the incredible opportunities given by the new possibilities of science and technology.
Our opinion is that we are compelled to elaborate a new thought about our bodies and nature, as our perceptions have changed a lot in these years. Certainly we can’t say anymore were we begin and where we finish: or when. Cloning, new technologies applied to surgery, virtual reality, present big problems to scientists, but even more tor lawgivers, and to common people. So we believe that we must be very careful, and examine each single case without prejudice. Surely we must try to stop all the experiments whose main aim is only profit, disreguarding the life - and the quality of life - of the people.
All this could seem very distant from theatre, but on the contrary we’ve always thought that theatre has to do first of all with body, time, and space and that the instruments of theatre are good enough to work on any argument.
OGM was firstly performed in Rome in May 2000 (Teatro Sala Uno), then again in Rome, but in an open space (Forte Prenestino, April 2001), and lastly (May 2001) in a body-shop for cars.

 

Space
OGM can be performed either on a regular stage (or in any kind of theatre) or in unconventional spaces, but average depht should be 8 meters, the same as the width.

Lighting
24 Channels Dimmmer
1 Computer Arri or Strand
24 Par 64
12 P.C. 1000
8 Domino
8 Profilesi (650 watt)
Gel holders, framing shatters, cables, ecc.

Audio - sound
1 8 cahannels Mixer
1 Amplifier (300 + 300 minimum)
2 Speakers (for the public)
3 Speakers (for actors and musicians, i.e. for the stage)
1 Hi-Fi Amplifier (for pre-recorded voices)
2 Cd Players
2 Radiomicrophones (Head sets)
3 Dynamic microphones (for percussions)
Cable, ecc.

Video-projection
1 video cassette (VHS) player
1 video projector

Personnel
2 Electricians (for the setting of lights)
1 Stage hand (for the assembling)

Assembling time
From the day before

Cast
2 actors, 1 musician, 3 technicians (light, stage and video, audio)

Playing time
 The running time is 55 minutes without break.

info: ramarri@tin.it (Marco Solari) - martin.clausen@inbox.ilink.it (Martin Clausen)