freely inspired by Life of Galileo by Bertold Brecht
and Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

“The only truth that gets through will be what we force through: the victory of reason will be the victory of people who are prepared to reason, nothing else. You speak of the Agro peasants as if they were the moss on their own huts. How can anyone imagine that their needs conflict with the sum of the angles in a triangle? But unless they get moving and learn how to think, even the finest irrigation systems won’t help them. Oh, damnation: I can see they are rich in divine patience, but where is their divine anger?”
(B. Brecht, Life of Galileo)

Without doubt the most important exponent of theatrical direction in the Balkans area of Eastern Europe, Branko Brezovec has already worked in Florence with the Laboratorio Nove on three occasions: Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens that toured the European circuit gathering praise and awards, Wedding and Trials supported by the European programme Culture 2000, and the show/event on the controversial figure of Tito Brosz that was the event of Fabbrica Europa 2007. A consolidated collaboration which opened the way for an in-depth relationship between Florence and high-quality Festivals and Theatres in Europe: the Kampnagel of Hamburg, the Mess Festival of Sarajevo, the Eurokaz Festival of Zagabria; and now it has the advantage of the collaboration of the New Museum of Contemporary Art of Zagabria.
This new work also reiterates the multinational structure of the cast: beside Brezovec’s direction we have the return of the Macedonian musician Marjan Nekak and Croatian and Italian technicians; the main nucleus of actors is Italian, but most of the Chorus are Croats. One of the main co-producers (from the National Theatre of Rijeka) is also Croatian, the Eurokaz Festival of Zagabria which for the last twenty years has been the stage for the best theatrical productions on the world scene. The project is firstly on what could be simply defined the relation between science and art, that is, the relation between science and the concepts that organise our life’s experiences and the implications created by that relation on the creation of new ethics and moral concepts. The text comes from the encounter/collision between the Life of Galileo by Brecht and Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. The themes of the two works pursue each other within a rigid musical score. Galileo is the man of science but also the man of his own time; after the brilliant phase of the full Renaissance, he feeds on the great contradictions between the various subjectivities imposed by rigid ethical and moral laws and man’s desire to become himself the creator of new truths using the instrument of science and the independence of intelligence. And it is the Promethus of Aeschylus undergoing his sentence who manages just the same to be the interpreter of the future in spite of, and to the desperation of, Zeus and his omnipotence. A prisoner holds the fate of the tyrant in his hands; from a condemned scientist springs the hope for a new set of ethics in the contemporary world. These contradictions move the universe: omnipotence is limited by ignorance and knowledge is limited by omnipotence. In divine economy the sum of the world’s suffering shall remain unchanged, at the centre of the perfection of the cosmos, science is theory that shall not influence the world order of suffering. Through their suffering, Prometheus and Galileo project the new order of things ad infinitum, they give back to man the dignity of imperfection within a perfect universe that is, at the same time, the temple of chaos.

adaptation and direction: Branko Brezovec
music: Marjan Nekak
set: Stjepan Filipec
costumes: Petra Mina
movement: Barbara Matijevic
lights: Roberto Cafaggini
light technician: Marco Santambrogio
stage hand: Davide Clementi
with: Silvano Panichi, Sergio Aguirre, Manola Nifosi, Lorenzo Berti, Suzana Brezovec
chorus: Elena Ciardella, Carmen Di Bello, Saša Matovina, Darko Matijaševic, Dario Bercich, Ivica Žunic, Nataša Ožura, Ivanica Lovric, Ljubov Košmerl; at the piano: Mattia Damiani
and with the participation of Romeo Martin Panichi, Pietro RibattiProduction: Laboratorio Nove, Centro Iniziative Teatrali, Eurokaz Festival, the Croatian National Theatre of Rijeka, Festival Teuta- New Ancient Theatre of Montenegro
in collaboration with: Fabbrica Europa, Fondazione Pontedera Teatro, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Zagabria
with the support of Il Genio Fiorentino