“Playing Memories” reaches its ninth and final residency, “The Scene is a Mirror”
“Playing Memories” reaches its ninth and final residency, crowning a multidisciplinary journey, which has also become a TV series on RaiPlay, that has brought together some 120 performers from all geographical and creative backgrounds, including Italian and international musicians, dancers, visual artists, set designers and actors.
After traveling through Italy and abroad, this caravan of artists closes the tour in L’Aquila, a city that has already welcomed the project in two of its eight previous residencies. Unlike in the past, the cast crosses the institutional boundaries of the “Alfredo Casella” Conservatory to enter the rooms of Palazzo Benedetti, where the final performance will also take place.
Reopened to the public after the earthquake, this splendid 17th-century building proves to be a magical place, a custodian of halls and rooms that tell stories of generations, with its frescoed vaults, goldsmith’s workshop, loggia courtyard, and staircase of honor leading solemnly to the main floor.
This last chapter stands as a true poetic distillation of the entire project, perhaps its purest and most radical declension, where the level of challenge is raised dizzyingly. In fact, unlike in the past, there are no more tutors to follow the children, just as there are no leaders-or rather, everyone in his or her own way will be one-let alone pre-established ideas from which to start. Performers are left completely alone, free to create, free to make mistakes, free to measure their own boundaries.
The cast, consisting of 14 artists derived from previous residencies, was called upon only at the last to discover the goal of the performance: to bring “Playing Memories” to the stage. The creative act, the ritual of rehearsal, the mistake that becomes insight and the excitement of creating together thus become the raw material of the performance.
In an evocative short-circuit that smacks of metatheater, the performers move within a metaphorical game of mirrors, in a complex narrative that transforms the behind-the-scenes into the work itself, offering the viewer an unprecedented glimpse into the living flesh of artistic creation.
SAVE THE DATE:
May 29, 2026, h 18:30 – Palazzo Benedetti – L’Aquila
“Playing Memories” is a project of the Saint Louis College of Music, co-produced with the Alfredo Casella Conservatory of L’Aquila, the Fondazione Accademia Teatro alla Scala in Milan, RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts and ISIA Rome Design.
