From Chekhov to the Atrides. After having taken on, with originality, the obsessions of Treplev and Nina in The Seagull last season, Carmelo Rifici chooses a dive into myth for the second production to be born from the collaboration with the LAC of Lugano (in which Rifici is the artistic director of the theatrical section) and the Piccolo (for which he directs the School of theatre). Iphegenia is only the beginning of the investigation which Rifici proposes to the spectator, calling on Heraclitus, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, René Girard, and the Old and New Testaments to provide stories and reflections on the true protagonist of the work: the violence of mankind as an inextricable reality and endless mystery. This work sees the continuation of the fertile and successful collaboration between Rifici and Angela Demattè, a playwright of great depth, with which the director has created the plays Avevo un bel pallone rosso, an examination of the figure of Margherita Cagol, the founder of the Red Brigades, Officina and Chi resta, on the elaboration of mourning for the relatives and victims of the mafia and massacres.
`A rehearsal room, actors and audience together – explains Carmelo Rifici –. A director and a playwright try once more to study the Legend of the Antrides, the sacrifice of Iphegenia. Posing questions regarding this age-old subject: where does violence come from? how can we stop the violence? will the word ever cease to be violent? what is violence? Crushed by paternal will, infected by the folly of the people, Iphegenia seemed unable to escape a hopeless destiny in which only the blood of an innocent could calm the violent hordes. Not only the Antrides, but all of the Western world carried the burden. The words of Athena which conclude the Oreseia, her delegating responsibility to mankind through shared laws, have still not lead to a solution. And yet there is a word which could stop the infernal machine, a word capable of unmasking the deception, but it is too inconvenient to pronounce, too dangerous for the ancient desire of man to overpower, to continuously desire what the other has».