A book to preserve a fundamental memory. To hold onto one
of the truly significant paths in contemporary theatre.
This third volume thus complements the two already
published by Ubulibri on the first twenty years of the theatre of Societas
Raffaello Sanzio. Epitaph is a book whose cover bears a
funeral mask — something that, by its very nature, holds in our
imagination more the power of return than that of rest.
And in this sense the book is a funeral mask placed at the exact
turning point for one of the most prestigious companies
on the international scene. At the moment when works that have deeply
shaped the identity of the new scene are being retired, and the company
sets out on a journey into the shadow that envelops the tragedy of
the future and the original role of theatre, this book becomes a
memorial stone placed at the turning point, a relief between two
horizons. A book that defines an age for Romeo
Castellucci and family, or perhaps a first life. Gathered in this
photographic volume, which opens with a few introductory pages
signed by critics and theatre practitioners who have closely followed
the journey of the Cesena-based company, are the images of
an identity in the making, captured over twenty years of plunges,
to put it in the words of the dear Carroll, "through the looking-glass". This
can indeed not be merely an iconographic collection, but
is almost a novel, a poetic autobiography told in flashes, the
relentless exposure to a force imprisoned in the film
and capable of freeing itself through the reader's imagination.

The author
Romeo Castellucci (director and visual artist). In 1981 he founded
the Societas Raffaello Sanzio in Cesena, together with his sister Claudia
Castellucci and his wife Chiara Guidi. Combining artistic research
with deep theoretical reflection, the group has established itself
as one of the most significant artistic experiences
of recent years. Among the most important productions we recall
Santa Sofia. Teatro Khmer (1986), Amleto. La veemente
esteriorità della morte di un mollusco (1992) and Genesi. From
the Museum of Sleep (1999).

…in brief
The only way of judging, for
me, remains beauty. A thing is beautiful when it carries you
far away, down there where you do not know, where you would never expect
to be. Beauty is violent and devastating like a
lightning bolt, a jolt. It is never fair. It has no arguments. It
is neither conciliatory nor positive. … There where
words begin to lose their narrative weight, where they
cannot face the terror of what we cannot understand,
before the enigma of life, there only aesthetics can
offer us a way of passing through bodies and the shipwreck of
the word.
Why go to the bookshop
For the reader this is a lightning journey through the most
wholeheartedly classical territories of our contemporary theatre.

Gian Maria Tosatti
LifeGate
Teatro