Always together. In darkness, in waiting, in noise, in the “I don’t knows”, in fear, in hope, in good fortune and bad. Always together, I swear it to you. I swear on this little cup, on this piece of bread and this little water, that I will not allow time to separate us. I swear on my skin, my hands and my lips. Always together, wherever we may be. On this side or the other. And then you say to me... we will grow old together. And I say to you... we will grow young together. On my skin, my hands and my lips. And on everything else, I swear.(Stage-writing materials | S. Battaglio)

A house divided by a border—established by human decision following a temporary armistice—becomes a metaphor for waiting, for an existence suspended between reality and illusion. Remnants of old furnishings can be glimpsed within it, while all around echo voices, explosions, sirens and the sounds of a battlefield.

Atom and Levana, survivors of an almost apocalyptic scenario, are a middle-aged couple living in two neighbouring countries at war. They spend their days in their small house—broken, battered, crooked, worn down—waiting for their beloved son, who has gone to war, to return and illuminate their present with renewed hope.

There is a war somewhere in the world, here or elsewhere; and there is a border that physically divides the house, just as it divides the lives of the two characters. Within the rhythmic flow of a routine marked by the monotony of repetitive, mechanical actions—translated into a continual redefinition of space—their existence turns towards a state of profound disorientation, embodying a condition that is deeply human and unmistakably contemporary.

Though forced to live in complete uncertainty and forcibly separated, Atom and Levana are driven by the constant desire to find one another again: to reunite, to reach the other side by crossing the border, and to restore a form of relationship, human contact and closeness that might allow them to feel alive once more. Forever balanced between what was and what is no longer, their precarious and unstable existence must be reinvented through the only means still available: imagination. It is through imagination that Atom and Levana build a new existence, imagining the strangest things—even imagining that their discarded clothes might give life to the body of their distant son.

The directorial concept underlying the work structures its temporal development into three moving acts—Always Together, Borderland, Son—within which the narrative unfolds through a layered dramaturgical process.

Born from an intertwining of theatre, dance and puppet theatre, the performance seeks to establish a hybrid language in which inanimate objects and human bodies can enter into dialogue, weaving multiple relationships with the stage space and simultaneously evoking different planes of reality. Through them, the themes present in Dorfman’s work are conveyed in order to prompt a deep reflection on the present, on ourselves and on our relationship with today’s world.

CONTEMPORARY DRAMATURGY AND PUPPET THEATRE AWARD

For having developed an innovative stage language that blends and fuses theatrical forms, within which puppet theatre and the use of masks, ingeniously interwoven with dance-theatre technique, find a uniquely effective form. The work achieves moments of genuine poetic suggestion, through which its fairytale tone discovers the terms and rhythms of a profound and universal pain: the pain of separation, detachment and death.

The performance thus succeeds in bringing to the stage, with great intensity, a harsh and profound text such as Ariel Dorfman’s, reading its most tragic contemporary themes—borders and war—through universal, emotionally shared values, and making them available to every gaze, across generations and ages. This is achieved through a creative use of masks, objects and stage music, transfigured into strongly symbolic signs of the narrative, to which the moving body gives meaningful material presence, together with a renewed use of dramaturgical metaphor.

The work therefore appears to respond effectively to the search for dramaturgical renewal, through new and significant texts, as well as to the renewal of the language of puppet theatre to which the Fondazione Famiglia Sarzi devotes its attention.

Maria Dolores Pesce

In Silvia Battaglio’s new creation, the puppetry quality of the movement vocabulary has a powerful phenomenological effect and adds different layers of meaning: the figurative metaphor is rich and complex. One senses visual forces, like invisible strings activating the dancers, while the movements give the human bodies an unsettling quality. These puppets oscillate between their connection to the body’s everyday reality and the absurdity of power. This is not dance with masks, but dance jointly choreographed with objects. Masking the dancers’ faces with happy expressions speaks powerfully of the fatigue of being forced to conform. It is remarkable that, in such a minimal performance, objects can become “bodies” full of history.

Felice Amato | Boston University College of Fine Arts

It is a performance of rare refinement and moving minimalism. The latter may sound like an oxymoron, but Silvia Battaglio makes it happen through flawless acting and by creating a fluid physical language, perfectly integrated with both the stage environment and even the soundscape. Not to be missed.

Franco Perrelli | University of Bari

DALL’ALTRA PARTE (On the Other Side) premiered nationally in November 2023 as part of Festival Aperto at Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia. In December 2022, it received the Contemporary Dramaturgy and Puppet Theatre Award from Fondazione Sarzi, in partnership with Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, ERT Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, FTS Fondazione Toscana Spettacolo, Teatro Akropolis and UNIMA Italia. It was also among the winning projects of CURA 2023 – Interregional Artistic Residencies and TAD Residency 2023.