ISOLE (Islands) is one of the constituent chapters of the broader 2018–2020 creative project Elegy of Lost Things. The work emerged during the isolation caused by the international COVID-19 emergency, with the aim of continuing and deepening—despite the difficulties created by distance—the complex creative work involved in developing the characters of Elegy of Lost Things.

The state of quarantine imposed by the health emergency forced the performers into solitude, into a tangible sense of emptiness and precariousness. In some way, this experience brought their feelings closer to the condition of the poor in Raul Brandão’s novel, from which the work is drawn. We gathered this significant experience, opened our eyes to see it clearly, and sought to treasure it by restoring its colours in a carousel of moving images: a series of very short films telling the uninterrupted small stories that gradually reveal the voids and desires of the characters in Elegy.

DRAMATURGICAL NOTES

(by Fabio Chiriatti)

It is like entering a house, a room, to take a furtive look.

Driven by the curiosity to listen to these men and women—above all to their bodies, the instruments through which they speak. Each has a desire to confess, a desire so great that it cannot be expressed in any way other than through the body. Some are happy desires; others are irresistibly unhappy, but they are no less worthy for that, nor more dangerous. Is there anything more terrible and dangerous than a desire for happiness?

The narrative is fragmentary: pieces of life turning on a carousel. The gaze rests now on one person, now on another, before briefly drawing back to take in the whole.