On the difficulty of telling the truth

The performance is based on a literary-political essay written by Bertolt Brecht titled Writing the truth: five difficulties. Written in 1934, after Hitler’s rise to power, for the German exiled playwright this was like a manual of military strategy through which he could dictate rules on how to tell the truth to the weak and fight the lies of those in who held the power. ErosAntEros decides to divulge this text together with some poems by the same author, in a performance concentrated on sound and voice, with the vocal presence of Agata Tomšič and the live electronics by Davide Sacco, and on the visual aspect with the projection of reality images by the photographer Michele Lapini, a sensitive observer of the social, environmental and political issues that characterize today’s world.

The work that ErosAntEros is trying to accomplish can be explained through Walter Benjamin “citation” (quote) technique. It was a way of pulling a segment of the past full of “now” – which provided an answer to the political situation of today – and then installing it into the present, in a similar way as the company is now trying to work, putting the text in relation to the images of our present. Lapini’s pictures are themselves dialectical:
they unfold on multiple planes, they associate within the same framing different meanings that assembled together lead to a new legibility of the reality of which they are a trace. The artistic act becomes a political action. A battle to make this essay known, relating it with frames capable of making people see reality in a different light, following Brecht’s idea that a book is a weapon, and Benjamin’s theory that art should hit the spectator like a bullet.

“Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgement to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the cunning to spread the truth among such persons. These are formidable problems for writers living under Fascism, but they exist also for those writers who have fled or been exiled; they exist even for writers working in countries where civil liberty prevails.”
Bertolt Brecht, Prologue to Writing the truth: five difficulties

based on the literary-political essay Writing the truth: five difficulties by Bertolt Brecht
translation by Bianca Zagari

concept and direction Davide Sacco and Agata Tomšič / ErosAntEros
texts Bertolt Brecht
stage adaptation Agata Tomšič 
with Agata Tomšič 
live electronics Davide Sacco
photos Michele Lapini
video Francesco Tedde

production ErosAntEros – POLIS Teatro Festival

copyright Suhrkamp Verlag AG Berlin courtesy of the Agency Danesi Tolnay

debut May 8th 2024, POLIS Teatro Festival, Ravenna
duration 45 min