By © Natalia Dantas- 

Day July 8, 2015 at the Roman Theatre of Volterra, the XIII International Festival of the Roman Theatre, a show just appeared on the scene: "Kiron Cafe", by Xenophon, Ovid and Dante, Sebastiano Tringali dramaturgy and Aurelio cats, the first global actor.

The Viewer is asked at the beginning that strange place is the one that lights up on stage…a kind of hostel, a place, a space not space, not time…suspended between existence and non-existence. And’ a cup of coffee, "Kiron Café", a hidden corner of the memory, in which "the border" between time, space, identity, myth, reality, modernity, globalization imposes itself and becomes the true protagonist.

The same host, at the beginning, when the lights of the Café, is devoid of identity…but is the dream, the border between reality and imagination, to give them one: is Kirone, the Centaur, half man and half horse, master of life and upbringing of half Greek mythology characters, one who asked Zeus grace to Prometheus and in Exchange gave up his immortality, returning to mankind the power to choose.

So, Kirone and Prometheus, together in the myth and the "dismissal" of Kiron Café, still together there, in an inseparable combination: Kirone, owner and operator, who lives eternally with its identity in pain, and Prometheus, defiant and bitter, associated with fire and so real in the sense of the role, chef at the café. They are the symbols of rebellion, which produces the "jump" over imagery that thunderstorm, essential to revive the myth.

The climate that reigns in Kiron cafè is tragic, and, to the sound of a popular music performed on accordion, tending to the rhythm of the tango, and dance. You dance and sing, too, at Cafe…A song that accompanies the unfolding of the action and which sometimes becomes pressing and repetitive…as common language lost archetype of suffering humanity.

Potential patrons of the café are today's refugees, homeless, stateless, no job, no food. Their needs are primary and unavoidable…Almost of the living dead, devoid of identity, stateless, anonymous, but with that familiarity with the pain that characterizes all the characters Kirone students. And’ the land and the Kiron Café, so that gives them an identity, one that humanity goes missing nowadays, in a globalization characterized by the predominance of the image on the word.

Perhaps, reflects the Viewer, the Cafe is also where they stop the characters of myth when they remain dormant in the collective consciousness, which forgets them too often. And’ the place where they persist and survive the days of reality, ready to awake like from a dreamless sleep, to restore truth to the imagination, life to the myth.

A transcendent place, where everyone's identity is revealed, because it transcends and transforms constantly, creating moments of dramatic tension in the Metamorphosis from human to mythological character. All a becoming symbolic, a come and go from themselves and from others: Achille, Briseis, the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, Hercules in a fury, Ariadne, Leda and many, many others, declared and subtext, revive the exalted of what is the "boundary" star of the show: the line between darkness and light, in the "second latch”in which what is invisible you can see and what is visible may disappear. The moment when Kirone may appear to be male but also horse, while remaining the symbol the transformation of temporality in eternity.

Over all, in scene stands the figure of the mother, with a baby in her lap, symbol of the indispensable perpetuation of the human race, without whose continuation will be extinguished even the myth.

We are all pilgrims, all potentially patrons of Kiron cafè: show original and profound creative and dramatic conception, with a glance at Cosmogony, made even more remarkable by staging millennial stage of Roman Theater of Volterra, stone Theatre among “Stone theatres”, itself steeped in tradition and myth: not to be missed.

© Natalia Dantas/operaeopera.com

KIRON cafè
choreography | Aurelio Cats
Director/drama | S. Tan/A.Gatti
music | Marcello Fiorini
sources: Xenophon, Ovid, Dante
original music: Marcello Fiorini and folk tradition
con Giuseppe Bersani, Carlotta Bruni, Monica Camilloni, Gabriella Cassarino, Marta Cirello,
Tiziana D’Angelo, Eugenio Dura, Gipeto, Rosa Merlino,
and Mario Brancaccio – Sebastiano Tringali