The play, dedicated to the figure of Mother Francesca Saverio Cabrini, tells the story of a ‘removal’, of that form of Italian emigration which took place between the end of the nineteenth century and the 1950s in its various guises: both international and seasonal, towards France, Switzerland and Austria, and internal, from the South towards the North of Italy.

In order to discuss the daily migration flows of our time, it is necessary to refocus attention on those which have been forgotten, reconstructing the characteristics, in order to understand what happened to this country’s memory, which has been almost completely sterilised.

We begin with the Commedia dell’Arte, the the Bergamasque Zanni (Enrico Bonavera), who tells of his journey by boat along the river Po with other fellow townspeople in search of food, to come to modern times through a series of symbolic situations. The story continues and becomes progressively more transnational, universal, and paradoxically timeless. Are these stories from the past? From a distant past? From a near future?

The various situations are expressed with different languages: the monologue-reading by Mother Cabrini, the writings of the Archbishop of Piacenza Giovanni Battista Scalabrini - played by Franco Sangermano, one of the first people to examine Italian emigration -, brief scenic excerpts played by young studying actors, live musical counterpoints with accordion, sax and guitar.

The common thread will be Mother Cabrini, with a focus on her courage, her pity, and her incredible visionary and artistic abilities, for which “the things which we dream, and in which we strongly believe, come true”.