AMELIA

“Amelia is a praise of fragility, an invitation to immerse oneself in the dimension of memory and to be traversed by the sense of emptiness that emerges from its loss.”
(Priscilla Pizziol)

Two bodies inhabit a single chair; they tell the story of a life spent together, sharing their solitude while trying to hold onto lived experiences, worlds and times now gone. The (non-)narrative unfolds through blurred fragments: a constant flow of memories — and forgotten memories — to which the two characters desperately attempt to cling.

Their bodies brush against one another, intertwine, support and hold onto each other in an attempt to preserve remembrance, to avoid losing those small gestures through which they are still able to recognize themselves.

The story hypothetically moves through different spaces, yet in reality inhabits only one: the chair. A single object becomes the point of return through which the past may be recomposed and the present understood. The chair exists, breathes, knows every secret; it becomes a place capable of containing confusion and emotion.

Within the performance, as within memory itself, time is not linear. The unfolding of recollections merges with a present in which gestures, sounds, faces and places dissolve into a blurred constellation of memories.

The performance is freely inspired by the dramaturgical investigation of the theatre play and film The Father by Florian Zeller.

The aim of the project is to create a narrative experiment in which body, time and space are manipulated: an experience shared between performers and spectators within the nostalgic pain of absence. A dialogue between solitudes, yet carried by a single voice attempting to escape loss — the loss of the other, of memory, of meaning.