Table puppets, suitable for ages 8 and up
Isabel Allende wrote: "At some point I realized that we come into the world to lose everything. The longer you live, the more you lose. First you lose your parents, sometimes very dear people around you, your pets, places and even your faculties."
What happens to us when we lose something or someone we care deeply about? This is what Louis must face when he awakens in the middle of the night. He was sleeping peacefully but, when he wakes up, he notices something strange: he's missing an arm! He goes through disbelief, doubt, fear, panic. His night transforms into a sleepless one in search of a solution. His is the story of searching for a new balance after a loss.
Phantom limb syndrome as a metaphor for another dear theme: continuing to feel even what's no longer there, even who's no longer there. Furthermore, connecting this theme to the broader topic of the body can open up research that seems to resonate in contemporary times, in the times we're going through after years of health emergency, times when the theme of the healthy or sick body, complete or amputated (in terms of losing something/someone) is no longer the great absent or the great removed but has strongly returned to our attention.
The first nucleus of this show was born in December 2021 as the outcome of Carola Maternini's project work, at the conclusion of Animateria, Training Course for operators expert in techniques and languages of figure theater, supported and organized at Teatro Gioia in Piacenza by Teatro Gioco Vita, Teatro del Drago, Fondazione Alberto Simonini. The following October, Louis was selected for Progetto Cantiere 2022-2023, a year-long journey that allowed on one hand to expand the work team, making use of the collaboration of Elisa Sarchi, from Calypso APS, and Arianna Talamona, from Piccola Compagnia Instabile and Luci Ferrigne, and on the other hand to develop the research until finalizing a show that debuted at Festival Incanti at Casa del Teatro Ragazzi in Turin.
Carola, Elisa and Arianna are theater practitioners and puppeteers trained with Animateria Teatro Gioco Vita (PC), Riserva Canini (MI-TO), Teatro del Buratto (MI). They work in social theater in non-professional contexts, conduct workshops, manage training, and handle projects supporting communities by combining social and artistic-cultural processes.
Louis has been selected for the Hortus Conclusus Festival in Novi Ligure in August 2024, the Adria Puppet Festival in Gorizia in October 2024, and AnimaIF in Cagliari in November 2024.