Simona Gonella directs Fear no more, a work that explores the many facets of the human soul with the fierce depth of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and the disturbed and dark levity of contemporary playwright Francesca Sangalli.

On stage, an author confronts the characters of one of her novels, with their urgent need to exist and their ability to reflect and challenge their creator. Clarissa and Septimus, the protagonists of Mrs Dalloway, which celebrates its centenary in 2025, are ghosts and mirrors, doubles of the author, creatures who escape from the novel to ask, in Pirandellian fashion, to be told.
While Virginia questions her own existence as a writer, distracted by the sounds of aeroplanes, inner voices and fragments of everyday life, unable to find a beginning that satisfies her, Clarissa and Septimus press her with their urgency to exist and tell their stories.
In Fear no more, Virginia Woolf's words, rewritings, poetic fragments and evocative images intertwine. And above all, there remains the echo of a verse from William Shakespeare's Cimbelino repeated by the two characters like a mantra, like an omen: “Fear no more the heat o” the sun / Nor the furious winter's rages'. Because there is nothing to fear, not even death, which is inevitable and should be embraced as an ultimate refuge from the difficulties of life; fear itself, perhaps, is the only thing we can truly free ourselves from.