On the difficulty of telling the truth

The play 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 Brecht, all centred on the difficulty of saying the truth, inside a show concentrated on sound and voice live performance, with the stage presence of Agata Tomsic and the live electronics by Davide Sacco.
The operation 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, by going through the text with a live performance, convinced it will be useful in order to comprehend our present and eventually, change it.
This is, for the artistic couple, a new way of understanding their role inside the society, a way that transforms the artistic act into a political action, and a battle to make this essay known as they believe in it and agree with it, 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 judgment 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)

concept Davide Sacco and Agata Tomsic / ErosAntEros
with Agata Tomsic
live electronics and direction Davide Sacco
tailoring Laura Dondoli

production ErosAntEros, E production
in residency at Drammatico Vegetale / Ravenna Teatro, Odin Teatret / Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium
with the support of CISIM, the Councillorship for Youth Policy of the Municipality of Ravenna and the supporters of the crowdfunding campaign “ErosAntEros meets the Odin Teatret”

thanks to Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari; Eugenio Barba, Roberta Carreri, Claudio Coloberti, Selene D’Agostino, Jan Ferslev, Donald Kitt, Pierangelo Pompa, Anne Savage, Rina e Ulrik Skeel, Julia Varley, Frans Winther, all Odin Teatret and all the staff of the Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium

premiere October 7th 2014, Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, Holstebro (DK)
duration 1 hour

image George Grosz, Eclipse of the sun (1926)

Show winner of a special mention at the 2017 Resistance Theater Festival of the Cervi Museum in Gattatico, Reggio Emilia