Auschwitz (2012)

Memory is a painful exercise which needs to be constantly revisited (when we stop, oblivion advances) and the Frantoio, responding to requests from local schools, has decided to re-stage the journey of both the deportees and the audience to keep alive the dialogue between the past and the present.

The performance, inspired by Firenza Guidi's numerous journeys to the concentration camps of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, as well as Terezin (Cech Republic) and Ebensee (Austria) and, more recently, to the camps of Ravensbrück and Buchenwald in Germany with 200 14-year-olds students from the school of Cerreto Guidi, Vinci and Sovigliana, wants to retrieve the memory of a unique historical moment and the physical, material and spiritual harm inflicted on millions of human beings. It is a witnessing of the past and an invitation to recognize the signs of such attitudes in the present.

For this edition, the performance is enriched by the union with the project "Diaries". The young spectators attend the performance bringing with them a blank diary hand-made by themselves. Through the performance, which gives an insight into life inside the camp, the students become themselves deportees: they look, live, listen, cry and feel emotions on their skin. Their journey fuses together the identity of spectator-witness and that of direct protagonist of the living death of the deportee. At the same time, the students become depositaries of memory in the act of reporting their emotions in their diary, written live throughout the performance.

Photogallery 2010 edition
Photogallery 2009 edition