Productions

Directed by Ivonne Capece
With Maria Laura Palmeri, Lara Di Bello and Giuditta Mingucci
Dramaturgy Ivonne Capece
Assistant director Micol Vighi
Sound designer Simone Arganini
Set design Micol Vighi
Costume design Micol Vighi
Video post-production Cristina Spelti
Light designer Cristina Spelti
Video shooting Lorenzo Salucci
Technique Angelo Generali
Production Elsinor Theatre Production Centre
Video location Gualandi Foundation for the deaf, Palazzo Poggi Museum Bologna
Show with Bineural audio/video technology, wireless headphones and interactive dramaturgy
European project  Play-On – New Storytelling with immersive technologies

The story is a cult: a natural science student decides to create a human being. He studies, kills animals, retrieves anatomical parts from corpses. The experiment is an unexpected success: the Creature is born, beautiful and strong. Its creator, however, despairs. He is afraid of it. Why? This is the real mystery of the novel: why does Frankenstein react the way he does, why is he not proud of his work?

We discover that the author, Mary Godwin Shelley, is not entirely comfortable with it either. On the contrary, throughout her life she denies and downplays the literary significance of her work and her interest in it. She should be delighted with the masterpiece she has created and instead does everything she can to belittle its motherhood. The answer? The Creature is the Book.

The play is an original reversal of the way we look at Mary Shelley's work and her disturbing creation.

This production tells of a time when being a woman and an artist could be a serious problem, when one could feel ‘monstrous’ if one gave birth to books instead of children or if one cohabited with a man instead of marrying him. It tells of a time when a female Creator fears the brilliance of her Creature and is forced to justify the magnitude of her ambitions.

Amidst wireless headphones, virtual settings, real actors and holographic avatars with interactive dramaturgical elements, the show is a dreamlike journey into the novel and, at the same time, into the emotionality of its author, who confuses herself with Dr Frankenstein, the Creature with the Opera and the characters with memories.