Shit loves being close to shit – that’s a fact. Be it because it comes from the same arsehole or because it floats in the same sewer, that’s the way it is. But certain shit also likes to be near chocolate or at least it would like people to believe so. Boasting about being nutritious is not enough, isn’t sufficient.
Theatre is life, but life is not theatre. On 8th March 2020, 9 prisoners in the prison of Modena lost their lives following the violent repression of a revolt inside it. For over a year many have been trying to shed light on the matter, the details of which are still unclear thanks to attempts made by the institutions to mislead and archive the investigations, silencing the voices of dissent and testimonies from inside. In this humanly chilling scenario, the Teatro dei Venti are bringing about a theatre project inside this prison, showing their indifference concerning the events that occurred and without the least empathy towards the people who lost their lives. In fact, the only cynical public comment on the affair was the acknowledgment of having lost an actor (because he was dead) and of having had to replace 90% of the other actors/prisoners (presumably because they were transferred after the revolt or because they refused or were forbidden to carry on with the project).
It is unacceptable that individuals who claim to be sensitive to life inside prison and exploit its human and economic resources, are incapable of taking a stance on things that have happened inside it, on the contrary show their complete indifference regarding the events. Not only, they went as far as to praise the work of the guards and the prison administration, whose behaviour is anything but transparent, it being a total institution.
It is known that total institutions represent parallel worlds that follow their own laws, in which people’s dignity is repeatedly crushed; this is facilitated by the complete isolation of the total institution from civil society and the latter’s lack of control over the respect of the rights of the persons imprisoned. Behind the written appearance of rehabilitation, with which prison administrations embellish those boxes of torture, there is the punitive reality and that of defending society from the dangerous individuals who unfortunately end up inside them. To take theatre into certain places of detention is, according to those who do it, mainly a way to give theatre the thrill of real suffering, sweetening everything with the excuse of somehow doing good to those who are inside. This justification is not only hypocritical but also opportunistic.
We believe these theatre people have more responsibility than they think in this affair, because by bringing the poetry of theatre to life they perhaps lit lights of beauty, freedom and justice which in real life had come up against the repression of the institution. At this point, however, the theatre people washed their hands of it all, thinking it inopportune to confront those who hold power in this context. Instead, they stood on the side of the torturers so as to continue their activities, adding more feet to trample the lives of human beings who inside the very prison in which they are playing at doing theatre, found death instead.
