Arduino Luca Degli Esposti was a friend of ours. We say “was” because a series of circumstances made him throw himself against a moving train between the stops of Fidene and Montelibretti, on the regional train line to Fara Sabina, outside of Rome. What remained of Arduino were the things he cared the most: his notebooks. Arduino kept saying he was a poet. He introduced himself like that, he used to write during parties, sitting on the sofa, with the music loud; he would stop you while you were talking to him because he had an idea and he started writing. Once he couldn’t find a pen and I saw him roasting a stick on the fire and use it as charcoal. Arduino was a poet. Writing was probably the only thing that made him feel safe, that made him feel real. In one of his notebooks he wrote down this sentence: “Life is not what you lived, but what you remember and how you describe it to tell it.”
A.L.D.E. is a performance of music and words. A bare theatrical show in which an actor and a musician converse. Arduino’s notebooks lie on the floor like spilled blood, his friends collect them and analyze them, trying to reconstruct the plot, to unravel the mystery. The language oscillates between narrative theater and live music. Slam poetry becomes a narrative tool functional to the story: the songs performed live punctuate the story of an adolescence, or its end. It seems to us that this is the strength of the project, reinterpreting a now widespread language, slam poetry, in an original key, theatrical and intimate at the same time. The figure of the poet, with his cruel need to acknowledge and experience, can only be a teacher and brother for us, especially in a moment like the one we are living, in which life itself seems ready to be rewritten.
concept and direction Giovanni Onorato
with Giovanni Onorato, Mario Russo
music Mario Russo, Lorenzo Minozzi
light design Fabrizio Cicero
lights Francesco Tasselli
costumes Chiara Corradini
dramaturgy consulting Claudio Larena, Giulia Scotti
thanks to Daria Deflorian and Grazia Sgueglia
coproduction INDEX, Romaeuropa Festival
for INDEX Valentina Bertolino, Francesco Di Stefano, Silvia Parlani
production residency Carrozzerie | n.o.t
with the support of Angelo Mai Occupato, Ex-Mercato di Torre Spaccata, Fienile Fluò, Settimo Cielo, Teatro Biblioteca Quarticciolo
duration 65′
Giovanni Onorato. Born in Rome in 1995, he studied theater outside the academies. Important for his training are the encounters with the theater of Roberto Latini, Daria Deflorian and Antonio Rezza. In 2016 he moved to Berlin where he studied contemporary dance for a year at Tanzfabrik Berlin. Back in Rome he works with Dante Antonelli, Filippo Timi and the Fettarappa/Guerrieri company. In 2022 his first work, “Suck my Iperuranio”, debuted in the venue Carrozzerie n.o.t in Rome, after winning the #pillole production fund from the Teatro Studio Uno. The piece is finalist in the Direction Under30 call and wins the Luna Crescente award. Also in 2022, “ Questo poco che sono” comes out, his first musical project. His new project “A.L.D.E. I never wanted to be here” was a finalist in the Biennale College competition and the Alberto Dubito award, as well as winning the special mention of the Dante Cappelletti “tuttoteatro.com” award. He organized a poetry evening entitled “Ghost Track 1” for the Romaeuropa Festival and was involved by the companies Deflorian/Tagliarini and Muta Imago to be part of the “Index” project. With Muta Imago he performs in the piece “Ashes”, winner of the Ubu prize for the best sound research. He studies philosophy. He has worked as a waiter, baker, detective and chauffeur.