È così che tutto comincia

Adapted from The Rules of Good Behaviour in Modern Society by Jean-Luc Lagarce – a cynical and hilarious guide to etiquette written by the French author in 1993 – the production combines live theatre with shadow theatre, and stars the intense Mariangela Granelli, winner of the 2020 ANCT Critics’ Award for Best Actress.

Being born is not complicated, and dying is also very easy. Living, therefore, is not necessarily impossible. One simply needs to follow the rules and apply their principles, aware that in all circumstances there is a solution, a way to react and behave. Life is nothing but a long sequence of trivial problems, for each of which one must know the answer.

This is the thinking of the protagonist, Madame, who, with an etiquette of extreme amusement, tears apart the hypocrisies of coexistence and reveals the hidden agenda of senseless rituals that guide us in their repetitive circularity.

In their notes on the project, Mariangela Granelli and Fabrizio Montecchi state: “We immediately saw the stage as a classroom, the audience as students on an evening course in Rules of Good Behaviour in Modern Society, Madame as a stern and inflexible teacher, assisted by a caretaker – a stagehand and jack-of-all-trades. You are not at the theatre but in a classroom: you are not there to watch but to study and, hopefully, to learn codes, conventions, etiquette and rituals”.