The extraordinary creativity of non-verbal theater and visual transformation at the Bellini Theater with the Mummenschanz!
Last night, one of the most anticipated shows of the season was held Bellini Theater of Naples: Mummenschanz, the musicians of silence.
A giant hand opens the curtain and appears on the stage as a real presenter, before the eyes of the incredulous spectators and anxiously waiting for what will soon take place. Another huge hand emerges from one of the entrances to the room and begins to joke with the audience, to caress and play with those seated, to then reach his "partner" on stage.
Both are there to present a show out of the ordinary, where the most commonly used objects are able to become anything else, but above all where the expressive potential of gestures, movements, colors and lights far exceed the sometimes overestimated power of the word in the theater .
I Mummenschanzin fact, I am one Swiss theater company founded in 1972, specialized in non-verbal theater and in visual transformation, which this year celebrates 40 years of career and successes around the world with a tour that aims to spread and make known the true language of the theater: that of the scene.
There are four actors on stage, who only reveal themselves when the show is finished to greet the audience from the limelight, but the viewer seems to have seen no trace of a human being for the duration of the play. For two hours his eyes are immersed in a magical and surprising world, in a place outside of time and space, where everything can happen and where everything can be transformed into something else, in real time. The gaze of the spectators remains enchanted by the continuous whirlwind of evolutions that take place before their eyes.
Extravagant and funny creatures, made of rubber, tubes, fabrics, foam rubber, fluorescent threads, paper and cardboard, cloth, plastic bags, rolls of toilet paper, emerge from the darkness of the scene with their sparkling colors, made even more evident by a skilful system of lighting, and they tell without ever using words, sounds or noises, and without the need for background music, scenes of everyday life, small love stories between imaginative characters, sketches comic and irresistible, before which you can not help but laugh, despite these strange creatures do not talk nor communicate with each other, if not gestures, or constantly changing their wonderful masks.
The most extraordinary aspect of the performance of the Mummenschanz is that, at a certain point, you don't even realize you are watching a “silent” show. And when we realize it we begin to think that the words, but even the music alone, would not have expressed what this “visual” language of the scene is able to communicate. In short the Mummenschanz take us back to an early theater, that of mime and pantomime, when the art of theater did not have to rely on anything other than its primary code, the visual one made up of scene, colors, lights, and body expression, like gestures, movements, masks, with which you can tell anything. An incredibly universal language understood by everyone.
So many are interactions with the viewer, repeatedly called to "contribute" in various ways to the "creation" of the same characters to be represented on stage, there are many laughs that break out in front of the spontaneity, but also the absurdities, of every sketches. Above all, however, the expressions and expressions of surprise by the public, which literally punctuated the show, continued.
Four the "stars" of Mummenschanz, of which two Italians, Floriana Frassetto (co-founder and artistic director of the company), Philipp He, Raffaella Mattioli e Pietro Montandon. They are the "souls" hidden in the darkness of the scene that give life, thanks to their physical agility and their bodily expressiveness, but above all to their creativity, to the infinite characters who for two hours enchant the audience with their surreal masks and their their wacky stories.
The show of the Mummenschanz represents an interesting and fascinating revelation of the true essence of the art of theater, which brings to the present the magic of the shows of the past, where the real protagonist of the scene was the "Visible drama" which was transmitted through the primary perceptive sense of the live show: the view.
I Mummenschanz they are still waiting for you on stage until 17 November 2013 at the Bellini Theater. (Here info on prices)
