Bros

Romeo Castellucci, a visionary director and co-founder of Socìetas in Cesena, presents a work in which action takes precedence over thought, which seems to hold no significance here; thought relinquishes its role as the cause that generates actions, and indeed as the judge of actions just performed. Everyone knows exactly what to do.

The undisputed protagonists of the show are a large group of anonymous men – recruited from the street – who, after signing a protocol they promise to adhere to faithfully, are guided by a wireless earpiece, receiving individual commands which they must obey in real time. A few minutes before the show begins, each of them is given a police uniform and an earpiece; every action – whether simple, complex or contradictory – is carried out within the timeframe specified by the order.

The show is a veritable anthropological experiment, a reflection on the law, on violence, and on the functioning of the police as a sort of brotherhood, a clan.

The ‘actors’ wear police uniforms from a few decades ago (with explicit references to the comedy of silent cinema), symbolically indicating the common force that governs everything and everyone and, at the same time, highlighting the unyielding individual response to fate when it presents itself in binding terms. At stake is the immediate acquisition of a ‘role’ to play: actions to be performed even when the intentions are not comprehensible. The pseudo-actors are asked to embody a theatrical quality that lives in the immediacy of the action’s execution, cutting out any premeditated psychology to make way for the truth of experience, because what matters is the immediate embodiment of the response and not the shrewd improvisation of those who know the trade.