La new season of LAC (Lugano Arte e Cultura) opens on Sunday 29 September at 19 pm, leaving the stage to Isabelle Huppert. The French actress, famous for her performances in both cinema and theatre, will be a one woman show Berenice, a monologue inspired by the tragedy of the same name by Jean Racine, with the visionary direction of Romeo Castellucci.
The show will be repeated on Monday, September 30 at 20:30 p.m. The event is part of the FIT Festival, one of the most important cultural events in Italian-speaking Switzerland, dedicated to international theater.

"Berenice” and Romeo Castellucci: a visionary reinterpretation of a French classic

Berenice is one of the highest texts of the French dramatic tradition, a work that speaks of loneliness, abandonment and unrequited love. Racine composed the tragedy in 1670 and since then it has been a symbol of formal rigor and emotional depth.
Romeo Castellucci, already known to the LAC audience for having presented Democracy in America e Bros, now offers a deeply personal reading of this work, exploring the universal themes of loneliness and loss through a minimalist and evocative staging.

The collaboration between Castellucci and Isabelle Huppert

The director defined Huppert as “the synecdoche of the art of acting, of Western theater,” recounting how her very figure was an inspiration to complete in detail the reinterpretation of this classic text. Huppert, with her ability to explore and reinterpret, to make accessible, the most subtle recesses of the human soul, will be the only interpreter on stage, in a performance full of emotional and psychological intensity.

International production

The show, which will be performed in French with Italian surtitles, is a co-production involving the LAC and over ten international theatre institutions. The original music was composed by Scott Gibbons, a long-time collaborator of Castellucci, while the costumes are designed by the Dutch designer Iris Van Herpen, whose talent is recognized worldwide. Famous for her creations that combine fashion and art, Van Herpen has clothes exhibited in the most prestigious museums on the planet and in this production she certainly did not skimp on her talent.

Isabelle Huppert meets the public

At the end of the first performance on Sunday 29 September, the public will have the opportunity to attend an exclusive conversation between the artistic director of the LAC, Carmelo Rifici – fresh from international awards for his work as a director – and Romeo Castellucci, with the extraordinary participation of Isabelle Huppert. An unmissable opportunity to discover the behind-the-scenes of artistic creation and get to know more closely the thinking of these giants of the contemporary theatrical scene.

The FIT Festival and the Extra Time Plus project

The debut of Berenice It also marks the start of the 33rd edition of the FIT Festival, a review dedicated to international theatre, which this year is enriched with the project Extra Time Plus. This initiative, which involves 4 Swiss cultural institutions (far° Nyon, Südpol Luzern, FIT Festival and LAC), aims to give visibility to the emerging scene, creating a network of exchange and comparison between artists.

The first date of Extra Time Plus will be Saturday 28th September at 21pm, with hug (Abbraccio), a work by Elvio Avila that explores the power of the hug and its impact on the production of serotonin. Sunday 29 September, again at 21 pm, it will be the turn of the dancer and choreographer Marion Baeriswyl, accompanied by the composer DCP, with the show A Thousand Places – Inside, which reflects on our way of inhabiting the world and relating to the Earth. Finally, on Monday 30 September at 19 pm, the young dancer from Locarno Banca Berger with Bi-ty will invite the audience to explore a universe of probability where dance, music and mathematics meet.

Pictures:
credit Jean Michel Blasco