Miss Bartleby. Non è tempo di essere

Based on one of the most famous short stories in North American literature - considered the forerunner of existentialist and absurdist literature - Miss Bartleby is a play that offers a gateway to reflection on social conventions, moral choices and individual truths. The theme is the dilemma of existence, between those who want everything and thus end up killing themselves, or those who renounce everything and thus kill life.

In Herman Melville's short story, the mild-mannered and diligent Bartleby is hired as a scribe in a Wall Street law office and, right from the start, begins to behave in a peculiar way: bent over his desk, he copies documents day and night, but to any other task requested by the lawyer he always opposes the answer “I would rather not”, without giving any explanation.
Throughout the story, the lawyer struggles with himself, between empathy for the new clerk and a desire to push him away, between duty and conscience, driven, as we all are, to solve Bartleby's riddle.
Over the years, numerous critics have tried to give a definitive answer to his famous statement, each according to their own interests and points of view. The Teatro della Contraddizione company believes that it is precisely in the mysterious charge that animates Bartleby that its power lies, forcing one to confront the profound human need to define and judge the motives of others.
Questioning is at the heart of this new project: putting the Bartleby “device” to work not to decode but to let the answer change depending on who is questioning him.
To do this, author and director Marco Maria Linzi felt the need to imagine what happens before the beginning of Melville's tale, before Bartleby walks through the door of the Wall Street office, the moment in which his final descent takes place. Not an everyday biography, but rather his inner journey as an individual and his universality as a symbol.
The play activates a device that contains not only Bartleby's existential apprenticeship but also that of the characters around him, launched in search of their place in society, creating a mutual relationship between the two dimensions. Bartleby thus becomes an alchemic force for others as well, a mirror - uncomfortable for those who want to face the journey towards the centre of society.
Through a dramaturgy composed of text, expressive elements and sound, in which the body is the main protagonist, Miss Bartleby develops a world oscillating between an inner reality that becomes visible and a path strewn with symbols and traces that redefine the character Bartleby, bringing to light what is hidden and immersing the spectators in a rational and emotional investigation.
An invitation to confront the ambiguity of human existence and to embrace the complexity of individual experiences: Bartleby becomes a mirror for the search for ourselves and the world we would like to inhabit, as opposed to the comedy we trivially call normality.