Last year, we appreciated an emotional reading of Addormentate, the first prize-awarded piece at the 2022 Biennale College, Drama section. For this year, the piece grew into a fully-fledged show, Sleeping Beauty, directed by Fabrizio Arcuri and co-produced by the Biennale. The party is over: a wood clearing, a curse imposed on the four young beauties at the centre of the stage, condemning them to deep slumber. They pricked their fingers on a ‘spindle’ and now their hands soiled in blood isolate them from the rest of the world. We in the audience are invited into a world of tortured souls and to look at wounds that represent familial relationships, identity, society. Director Fabrizio Arcuri commented: “Carolina Balucani’s text is a flood of words: scenes pile on top of one another to the point that we cannot really set a stage for this show – we would need the entire world. Staging indications are so detailed that we cast an actor just to read them to us. This means overwhelming vitality, the same vitality adolescents have as they face adult life, with all their fears and exuberance.”

Featured image: Addormentate, Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia – Photo Andrea Avezzù