1789; the Revolution breaks out in France, spreading throughout Europe, forever characterising the world in which we continue to live. Yet what remains of this period, 230 years on? Elvira Frosini and Daniele Timpano – joined on stage by Marco Cavalcoli –, look into Western culture through their cutting and ruthlessly ironic style, unmasking all its rhetoric and fundamental myths. Past and present, French and Italian history, modernity and post-modernity all overlap in this work, winner of the 2022 Ubu Award for Best New Italian Text, as part of a process aimed at undermining our “democratic” lives and the ideas related to the concept of revolution. Is a revolution still possible today? What form would it take?
«The aim of Ottantanove is not to tell a story, or present History, but rather to take a dive into a fundamental myth, into the cultural materials that created it, and that were created as a result – explain Frosini and Timpano –. Ours is an Italian point of view, as cousins from the other side of the Alps; the inferior and less evolved relatives that need to be liberated and civilised. We did not create the French revolution. Quite the opposite. In a sense, we endured it. However, ours is also a Western European point of view because, despite everything, we are the heirs of the Revolution. Our democracies, contemporary Europe, and the entire world in which we live, was founded in that period.»