Purgatorio

The man who passes through purgatory - the "song of the earth" - is a curious being, ceaselessly arrested by the concreteness of the things and objects around him, in a representation of his own life. This material occupies, encumbers, attaches and often torments him. It bears witness to precisely what purgatory is for Romeo Castellucci: human life in its daily repetition, the familiarity of everyday tasks, the trap of routine, the experience of the banal body, the reunion with the finite world, known nature, the materials of life. He knows he is condemned to wander among reality, at once represented without distance, abstractly, and hyper-realistically, "a reality without a shadow" says the director, who has worked extensively on forms in the making. The punishment here is simply to live, to experience the world. This Purgatorio is more than just a show, for it also offers the spectator an experience that Romeo Castellucci places great value on: suddenly finding oneself on the other side of the theater game, on the other side of the performance. It's as if each spectator could attend the projected spectacle of his or her own primitive life, returned to the earliest times of origins and birth.