Renzo Francabandera on POLIS 2026, “PAC”, May 10 2026
POLIS 2026: In Ravenna, POLIS discusses female pleasure through documentation and performance, “PAC,” May 10 2026
“[…] Among the most eagerly awaited events, on 6 May we have the opportunity to attend a performance-lecture at the Teatro Rasi, brought to us from Lithuania by the young director Laura Kutkaitė. The show is entitled tremolo, which in music refers to the rapid, obsessive repetition of a sound, an interval or a chord. What is tremolo about? Pleasure.
Exactly that – erotic pleasure – and here, expressed through a female lens. Joining Kutkaitė on stage is Kristina Morta, and together they seek to transform that word into vibration: pleasure, certainly, but also fear. The fear of not living up to the expectations that society has hammered into us like nails. The fear of not conforming to norms that we often did not choose but have learnt to repeat until they have become the soundtrack to our intimacy.
[…]
In collaboration with POLIS Festival, a discussion was organised between audience members, artists and the author Giulia Blasi, in partnership with the Casa delle Donne in Ravenna. The idea is that tremolo is not a lecture delivered by those who know to those who do not, but rather the start of a conversation. Its aim, in fact – stated openly, almost naively in its clarity – is to help everyone feel normal and healthy in their sex lives. Put like that, it sounds trivial. Yet it is one of the most radical things one could ask of theatre today. Because normality is never a given, never taken for granted, never the same for everyone. It is a daily achievement, made up of questions we have never dared to ask and answers we didn’t even know we had within us. The repeat performance with schools, where anonymity was guaranteed and the young audience could ask questions in confidence, saw this part of the show last an incredible hour. The questions were endless; young women and men wanted to know, to understand, to share. A flood of questions on everything that was being discussed, the tangible expression of those fears and anxieties that perhaps never truly fade, but which every generation must understand and confront anew, because they are never considered resolved once and for all.
Within this dual artistic framework, Sacco and Tomšič emphasise the significance of presenting tremolo, a piece they both chose to bring to the community. At a festival entitled POLIS, staging a performance like this means bringing back into the public discourse what has for too long remained confined to the private sphere, to the secrecy of the bedroom or the silence of medical consultations. Female pleasure is not an optional extra, it is not a frivolous topic, it is not something to be ashamed of. It is a matter of health. Of freedom. Of democracy. And if a ‘gentle strength’ is needed to tackle it, then so be it. Because kindness, as we know, is often the highest form of courage”.