Short Interviews with Exceptional Women
text by Joan Yago
Focus National premiereSince 2025, POLIS Teatro Festival inaugurates a collaboration with PAV, entrusting texts translated through the international project Fabulamundi New Voices to local theater companies to create a mise en espace, which is presented as a national premiere at POLIS.
Glenna Pfender has blue skin due to an out-of-control addiction to the chemical derivatives of silver. She believes that happiness consists of being in a place and wanting to stay there forever. Ukrainian model Natalia Yaroslavna has modified her body to become a flesh-and-blood Barbie doll. Today she will explain to us that at one time we were gods and, if we wanted to, we could be gods again. Susan Rankin represents the county of Clark at the Nevada Assembly. She dreams of an America where all the boys and girls –independently of their religion or origin– can go to school with a weapon in their rucksack. We have between two-hundred and a thousand years to abandon the planet Earth. We will talk about it with world expert in transhumanist engineering Roberta Flax. Rosie Powell is the youngest transsexual girl in the United Kingdom. She loves to wake up every day in this wonderful world and is absolutely certain that, in the future, people will be better.
with Maurizio Lupinelli, Gemma Carbone, Flaminia Pasquini Ferretti, Elisa Pol
direction Maurizio Lupinelli
duration 60 min
Joan Yago holds a degree in Directing and Playwriting from the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona. He is the author of the following plays: Everything that comes now, Brief history of the Spanish railway, What do we talk about while we don’t talk about this bullshit (butaca Award 2021), Brief interviews with exceptional women, Fairfly (Max Award 2018), or You say tomato (2016 Serra d’Or Prize) among others. His plays have been staged in countries such as Spain, France, Canada, Turkey, Greece or Italy. He is a founding member of the La Calòrica company.
Founded in 2007 by Maurizio Lupinelli and Elisa Pol, Nerval Teatro combines attention to contemporary dramaturgy with an artistic journey with people living in situations of social marginality. It has produced performances appreciated by audiences and critics: in 2008 two texts by Antonio Moresco: Fuoco Nero and Magnificat, in 2010 Appassionatamente, inspired by the dramaturgy of Werner Schwab, the first phase of a three-year project exploring his poetics, which will be followed by Le presidentesse (2013) and Canelupo Nudo (2014). In 2011 the company confronted Sarah Kane’s Psicosi delle 4:48, and in 2013, working four-handedly with Roberto Abbiati, it created the children’s production Carezze. In 2016 it debuts with Ma perché non dici mai niente? Monologue, from a text by Lucia Calamaro, and five years later he stages The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant by R. W. Fassbinder. Since 2007 it carries on at Armunia the Permanent Laboratory dedicated to the languages of theater with differently abled people in the municipality of Rosignano Marittimo (LI). The Permanent Laboratory has produced outstanding, nationally recognized works such as: Marat (2007), Hamlet! Ovvero l’incontro mancato (2009), Che cosa sono le nuvole (2012), the focus on Beckett composed of the performances Attraversamenti, Winnie and Sinfonia Beckettiana (2015-2018), DOPPELGÄNGER/Chi incontra il suo doppio muore, produced four-handedly with the Abbondanza/Bertoni company, featuring the disabled actor Francesco Mastrocinque and the dancer Filippo Porro. The production won the 2021 Ubu Award for Best Dance Performance 2021. Among other awards, in 2020 Maurizio Lupinelli was also awarded the Premio Rivista “Gli Asini”. The project thus structured was configured as an example of good practice and in 2019, thanks to the support and interest of the Department of Social Services, it was transferred to the municipality of Ravenna, involving three different social cooperatives in the area (La Pieve, Selenia and San Vitale). Thus was born the Permanent Workshop “Il teatro è differenza,” which debuted in 2023 with the play Marat/Sade: le due rivoluzioni and later with La Buca featuring the differently abled actor Carlo De leonardo from Ravenna and Maurizio Lupinelli himself.