ARCHIVIO
STEFANO MAZZOTTA
// ZEROGRAMMI
MAPPUGGHJE
]
UNO SPETTACOLO, UN PROGETTO FOTOGRAFICO, UN PROGETTO DI RICERCA COREOGRAFICA, UN PROGETTO MULTIMEDIALE
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*Mappugghje* explores the figure of Penelope as a body of waiting, memory, and domesticity.
A narrative for dance and voice in which small preserved objects become traces of love, time, and identity.
The project originated from a period of research developed between Italy and Portugal, moving through artistic residencies, domestic spaces, and autobiographical materials. Mappugghje takes shape as a work suspended between theatre and dance, where the body enters into dialogue with language and with an intimate, fragile, everyday scenic dimension.
At the center of the project emerges the figure of Penelope: not as a monumental heroine, but as a silent presence inhabiting the time of waiting. A waiting that does not coincide with immobility, but with a continuous inner transformation.
Mappugghje is a Salento dialect word referring to small objects kept without any apparent order: bric-à-brac, remnants, domestic memories, things of little value that resist time because they preserve an emotional trace. The project’s imagery is built around these fragments: forgotten objects, boxes, fabrics, photographs, and humble utensils become extensions of memory and body.
The figure of Penelope is approached far from the rhetoric of classical myth: not only as a woman who waits, but as a body that weaves, unravels, preserves, and holds back. An immobile nomadism moving through home, time, and loss.
The creation brings to the stage an original text by Fabio Chiriatti, whose writing traverses myth through a language deeply connected to the earth, memory, and the oral dimension of Southern Italy.
The choreographic research underlying Mappugghje develops through a practice of accumulation and subtraction. Everyday gestures, minimal actions, autobiographical materials, and fragments of narrative are explored until they are transformed into a physical and dramaturgical score.
The scenic construction unfolds through layers: the body enters into relationship with objects, memories, and words, generating a space suspended between real presence and evocative dimension.
The research approaches waiting as a physical experience. Not an empty time, but a time that alters, consumes, holds back, and transforms.
The work is built around an internal fracture within the figure of Penelope, here split into two scenic presences.
On one side, a young Penelope embodied by a dancer: a figure still traversed by desire, love, and the illusion of return. On the other, a Penelope marked by twenty years of waiting, portrayed by an actress: a presence that brings onto the stage the transformation of time, disillusionment, and the profound mutation of love.
The dramaturgy develops as a dialogue between two temporalities of the same body and the same memory. Dance and language do not illustrate the myth, but rather move through its emotional tensions: waiting, emptiness, restraint, and the slow erosion of desire.
The scenic construction proceeds through an accumulation of images, narrative fragments, and minimal actions, allowing a space suspended between domestic memory and archetypal dimension to emerge.
Over time, Mappugghje has generated different crossings between stage work, research, and relationships with territories. The project lends itself to dialogue with intimate and unconventional contexts, maintaining a strong proximity between performers and spectators.
Alongside its scenic form, the work opens possibilities for activation connected to personal and collective memory: workshop practices, collections of objects and testimonies, and narrative devices built around themes of waiting and preserving.
The project continues to question the relationship between body and emotional archive, allowing new drifts and possibilities of rewriting to emerge.
Zerogrammi
O Espaco do Tempo (Pt)
Spazi Per La Danza Contemporanea (ETI)
Centro de Artes performativas do Algarve Devir Capa (Pt)
Pim Spazio Scenico (It)
Moovin'UP
Gai
Mibac
Ministero della Gioventù)
Regione Piemonte
Ministero della Cultura
Dimora Coreografica (It)
Atelier REAL (Pt)
STATUS: archive
FIELDS: contemporary dance / myth / femininity / memory / poetic research
ACTIVATABLE FORMATS: —
ACTIVATION CONTEXTS: theatres / festivals / cultural spaces / educational contexts
AUDIENCES: general audiences / students / artistic communities / cultural contexts
MODES: indoor / adaptable / site-sensitive
DURATION: variable depending on the format
LANGUAGES: Italian / non-verbal
PARTNERS: festivals / cultural institutions / artistic networks
AVAILABLE MATERIALS: dossier / gallery / video / press kit
