Enrico Castellani

Enrico Castellani (09/01/1977), since 2005 director, together with Valeria Raimondi, of Babilonia Teatri, one of Italy’s most vital and revolutionary experimental theatre troops. Castellani is a playwright, author, director and actor in the productions of Babilonia Teatri and earned numerous awards: Scenario Award 2007 Ubu Award 2009 (Special Award) Ubu Award 2011 (Best Italian Newcomer) Hystrio Award 2012 (Playwriting Award) Enriquez Sirolo Award 2012 (for the category New languages and Social and Civic Commitment in the section Experimental Theatre) Città Impresa Award 2012 and 2013. He is based in Verona. Keywords: storytelling, photography, catching scraps of reality. Framing our quirks, our anxieties, our schizophrenia. With irony, self-irony and demythologization. With cynicism and love.

Theatre works

2006-2007 /Panopticon Frankenstein; first performed: on 19 May 2007, in the “Maggio all’infanzia” Festival, Teatro Industriale, Gioia del Colle, Bari; shortlistet for the 2006 Scenario Infanzia Award, winner of the 2007 Piattaforma Veneto Award in the Operaestate Festival Veneto.
2007 / Underwork – A Precarious Work for Three Actors Three Tubs Three Hens, first performed: on 25 May 2007, Teatro dell’Angelo, Vallese di Oppeano (Verona); published by Titivillus (2013) in Almanacco edited by Stefano Casi.
2007-2008 / made in italy; first performed. on 19 January 2008, CRT Teatro dell’Arte, Milan; published in Hystrio, (2009), and by published by Titivillus (2013) in Almanacco edited by Stefano Casi. Scenario Award 2007, nominated for the Ubu Award in the category Italian Newcomer/Research in Playwriting, Vertigine Award 2010.
2009 / Pop Star; first performed: on 2 June 2009 for the 2009 edition of the Festival “Primavera dei Teatri”, Castrovillari (Cosenza).
2009 / Pornobboy; first performed: on 19 June 2009 in the Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Cavallerizza Reale – Manica Corta, Turin; published in New writing italia. Dieci pezzi non facili di teatro, by Editoria & Spettacolo (2011), edited by Melandri M. and Di Giammarco R.; published by Titivillus (2013) in Almanacco edited by Stefano Casi.
2010 / The best of; first performed. on 3 June 2010 in the Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Fonderie Teatrali Limone, Turin. Off Award of the Teatro Stabile del Veneto.
2010 / The end, first performed: on 25 January 2011, CRT Teatro dell’Arte, Milan; published in Hystrio (2011) and by published by Titivillus (2013) in Almanacco edited by Stefano Casi. Ubu Award 2011 for the category Italian Newcomer/Research in Playwriting.
2012 / The Rerum Natura – Special Project from The End; first performed: on 18-20 June 2012, Teatro Festival Italia, Nuovo Teatro Nuovo, Naples.
2011-2012 / Pinocchio; first performed: on 8-9 December 2012, at the Teatro Storchi, Modena.
2013 / Lolita, first performed: on 15-16 June 2013, Teatro Festival Italia, Museo Ferroviario Nazionale of Pietrarsa, Naples.

Special Projects

2009 / Special Price; first performed: 11-18 June 2009, Teatro Festival Italia, Convitto Vittorio Emanuele II, Naples.
2010 / Baby don’t cry; first performed. on 22 May 2010 in the Festival “Maggio all’Infanzia”, Teatro Kismet, Bari. Play for children aged 7 to 10.
2010 / This is the end my only friend the end; first performed: on 9-11 July 2010, in Santarcangelo dei Teatri, Teatro Corderia di Santarcangelo, Ravenna.
2010 / La pancia; first performed: on 23-24 April 2010, at Manica Corta – Cavallerizza Reale, Turin. 2011 / Il mio nome è musa; first performed: on 19 April 2011 at the Teatro Fondamenta Nuove in Venice.
2012 / Maledetta primavera; first performed on 17 June 2012 at the Naunynstrasse Ballhaus in Berlin for the Festival “Voicing Resistance”; the Italian opening took place on 4 October 2012 at the Teatro di Roma for “Wake Up! Bagliori dalla primavera araba”; published in Hystrio (2013).
2012 / Pinocchio de-construction; first performed: on 7 October 2012 in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, open-air happening.

The End by Valeria Raimondi and Enrico Castellani
The end is an in-your-face exploration into the silence, censorship and anxiety concerning death today. The End primarily tackles a twofold fear: that of death and that of living, two apprehensions we are unable to accept and live with. In our days death has come to be non-existent: no-one talks about it, no-one mentions it, it’s a taboo. Death is considered to lie outside life. We look at ourselves and endeavour to take photographs of us. At the same time we question ourselves as to the reasons that lead us to see death as a far-off occurrence: something violent and traumatic, an event not to be lived with and impossible to make up with.

– Extracts from The End –

THE HANGMAN from The end
i want my hangman
i want to hire him
book him
buy him
i want him to travel always by my side
i want it written in black and white
i am your hangman
i am your hangman
i want it sealed by a notary
a few plain words
i don’t want a slow death
i want a gunshot
a single one
right here
in the head
between my eyes
what you call life
i don’t want that
don’t want to live it
don’t want to see it
don’t want to suffer it
not interested
a few plain words
i don’t want a slow death
i won’t be screwed
ripped off
fucked
i’m telling you right now
i’m writing it
i’m paying
you’ll have to do it
just pull the trigger
i need a death insurance
my death- insurance
against a slow death
i want no wards
no doctors
no opening hours
no priests to be comforted
no lab coats
no drips
no needles
no devices
tubes
electricity comforts
cleanliness
no painkillers
palliative care
no experts
professionals technicians
no signature
no approval
no judge no protocol
no practice
no numbers
i won’t be my own bed number
my own medical records
my own examinations
my own x-rays
my own blood test
fuck your hospitals
your homes
fuck your hypocritical indulgence
your consolatory morals
your tamed religion
fuck your cheap sentimentalism
your charity-marathons
your fake compassion
fuck your science
your technologies
your bureaucracy
you won’t recycle me
you won’t donate me
you won’t dissemble me
i won’t be cut to pieces
i don’t want a heart
a kidney
a second-hand lung
i’m no dorian gray
i’m no dorian gray
i’m no dorian gray
i want my hangman
you won’t see me shitting in my underpants
swimming in my own piss
i won’t be washed by a foreign cunt
i won’t spend my last days in adult nappies
i won’t hang about with old nutbags
while you have it off in your homes
i won’t see your arse-faces once in a month
i won’t be fed waste
i won’t be fed through a tube stuck in my belly drips in my veins
i won’t have a pisspot at my bedside
i won’t let my rotting brain be a show for you
i won’t wait till my arse is covered in sores
i won’t be parked before a tv-set in a fancy room
i won’t count my falling teeth
i won’t listen to my fellow inmates screaming
i won’t stand them moaning their insanity their agony
i won’t watch them die i won’t wait to be next
i won’t be fed pills and their unpronounceable names
i won’t listen to your soothing words
your incitement
your lies
your questions about my health condition
i won’t stand
your embarrassment
your impotence
i won’t let you play
your roles
i won’t accuse you
you won’t get my spite
i won’t spend my last days in a cell
decked out as a room
i don’t want a nightstand a table
its chair
i won’t live in a place i don’t have the keys to
i won’t follow your schedules
I won’t yield to your cares your numbers your rationality
i won’t follow your rules
i won’t take your hospitality
i won’t fight senseless fights
i won’t change my mind
i won’t quit smoking drinking eating
i’ll stay true to myself no-one shall
see my tears
i’ve always shed them in my own darkness
they shall stay there
there where I withdraw to cry
to enjoy alone
to cry on my own
to swing my cock on my own
you shan’t take me from my seclusion
i won’t see your children
i won’t breed them
i won’t clean your pots
your linens
your underpants
i won’t be your warning
your foreboding
your lesson
i’ll go quietly without a sound
i won’t leave any dirt lose
my hair in vain become a skeleton
smirk white coats with my gall
my puke
a gunshot will do just
one
cheap
quick
no side effects
a garden hose
to clean the spots
a small jet
a measured one
no splashes on the wall
you won’t need to help
you won’t need to remember
you are not to make a pilgrimage
nor take a bow
nor show remembrance
i won’t be a body ashes
ashes only ashes
no trails
no hindrances
no flowers
no lanterns
no dull
comings and goings nothing
but quiet
peace
life
nothing
but quiet
peace
life
nothing
but quiet
peace
life
they’ll put me in a plastic bag
they’ll get me out of the bag
you’ll never know those
who’ll empty me
you’ll never know those
who’ll cover me in make-up
you’ll never know those
who’ll fix my body
you’ll find me in a coffin
the coffin
you chose dressed
in the dress you chose
in a funerary urn
in the urn you chose
a stranger as the priest
who will officiate my funeral
he’ll tell the world
who i was
what i thought
what my merits and qualities
were a priest
you don’t know
will bring you comfort
he’ll tell you that god needed me
god called me to god
i went back a priest
i don’t know
will bless me
will welcome me into the church of popes
it won’t matter
if you’ll have been my god it won’t matter
if i’ll have turned into idol or likeness it won’t matter
if i’ll have taken thy name in vain it won’t matter
if i’ll have observed the holy feast it won’t matter
if i’ll have honoured my father and my mother
if i’ll have killed
if i’ll have committed adultery
if i’ll have stolen
if i’ll have borne false testimony
if i’ll have loved my neighbour
it will be enough not to have put myself to death.