as part of the Fabbrica Europa 2026 festival
in collaboration with Fondazione del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Rubble
In an age of rubble, there is no other possibility than to work with what remains, to blow on the ashes in order to rekindle the fire.
What remains of tragedy: words without sound.
What remains of the polis: a society of strangers.
What remains of ritual: a burnt-out dramaturgy.
What remains of myth: a story worn thin.
What remains of a hero: a figure out of focus.
The song of Oedipus rises from the rubble.

Antiphanes writes in the comedy Poiesis:
Tragedy is a fortunate art, because the spectators already know the plot before the poet tells it; he only needs to remind them. As soon as the name ‘Oedipus’ is spoken, everything else is already known — his father Laius, his mother Jocasta, his daughters, his sons, what he suffered, his guilt.

How can we rebuild today that collective knowledge which once spared the tragic poet from having to turn myth into prose, and allowed him instead to summon immediate visions in the audience?
How can we accomplish the tragic today?
What language is it, what do we wish to say to the spectator through Sophocles? And in which tongue?
Sophocles’ Greek was deliberately elevated and musical, a language that tears us away from the plane of reality and places us on a level of transcendence.
How can we offer the audience the perfect dramatization of the perfect myth in a language that is not hostile and conceptual, but musical, instinctive, sensual?

Alessandro Serra chose Grecanic, a language that still resonates today in a remote corner of what was once Magna Graecia.
An age-old idiom, marked by languages imposed from above and by subaltern dialects that grew spontaneously in the sublime field once sown by the Greeks — such as Calabrian and Apulian.

The tragedy of Oedipus is set in a city reduced to a flicker, arid, sterile, decomposing. And yet Sophocles guides the spectator toward an inner light that will reveal itself at Colonus, in the sacred grove where Oedipus will be literally absorbed by the gods.

Alessandro Serra is an Italian theatre director, author, set designer, and light designer, and is considered one of the most original and influential voices in contemporary theatre. Founder of the company Teatropersona, he has developed a theatrical language that weaves together myth, archaic forms, symbolism, and a strong centrality of the actor’s body. His poetics is rooted in a “dramaturgy of the image,” where sound, light, and matter become autonomous narrative elements.
Between 2006 and 2011 he created the “Trilogy of Silence” (Beckett Box, Trattato dei Manichini, AUREE), works that earned him national and international awards. In 2017 he achieved international recognition with Macbettu, a Sardinian-language version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which won the Ubu Award for Best Performance of the Year, the ANCT Award, the Golden Laurel Wreath Award for Best Direction, and numerous other prizes.
His works have been presented in Italy, France, Switzerland, South Korea, Russia, Poland, the United Kingdom, and South America, establishing him as one of the most acclaimed Italian directors on the international scene. In 2024 he premiered Tragùdia – The Song of Oedipus, a visionary re-imagining of the Sophoclean myth in the Grecanic language, the result of extensive research in the Grecanic communities of the Aspromonte region. The production, awarded in several international festivals, stands as one of his most mature and radical creations, where classical tragedy is restored as a contemporary ritual.

by Alessandro Serra
cast: Alessandro Burzotta, Salvatore Drago, Francesca Gabucci, Sara Giannelli, Jared McNeill, Chiara Michelini, Felice Montervino
direction, set, lighting, sound, costumes: Alessandro Serra
Grecanic language translation: Salvino Nucera
voices and chants: Bruno de Franceschi
movement collaboration: Chiara Michelini
sound collaboration: Gup Alcaro
lighting collaboration: Stefano Bardelli
costume collaboration: Serena Trevisi Marceddu
production and distribution: Danilo Soddu
technical director: Francesco Peruzzi
stage manager: Luca Berettoni
sound technician: Alessandro Orrù