STORY-LINE

COTRONE is inspired by I Giganti della Montagna (The Mountain Giants), the unfinished posthumous work of Luigi Pirandello, a very well known Italian playwright of the early twentieth century.
The unwritten final act, which the author had only recited to his son on his deathbed, becomes the suggestive “mystery” which brought about this performance.
Marcel.li’s carnal and fantastic world has an unexpected affinity to the enigmas which shroud the Villa della Scalogna (House of Bad luck) particularly Arsenale delle Apparizioni. This last place in particular has been transformed by the Catalan performer’s visionary, ironic and technological nature, appointed to take on the unfinished final act of I Giganti della Montagna.
Two unkowns take on the role of guide, two crazy characters who maintain that they are the bearers of Pirandello’s last words. In the new Arsenale delle Apparizioni, they use technological devices designed by Marcel.lì to recount their version of the last missing piece.
And so, as if by magic, we also find Ilse and Cotrone, Spizzi and Diamante, Cromo and Battaglia, Quaqueo the dwarf and the young Milordino in the Arsenale, who turn to the spectators telling their tales as “characters in search of an author” (like the title of an other Pirandello work), deformed by their own desires.

LANGUAGES

COTRONE occurs in an essential scene, made up of a big screen, safety mats, a videocamera and special technological devices such as the “guncam”. The two actors wear “dreskeletons”, interfaces of an esoskeletal nature, created by Marcel.lì from 1998 and developed especially for this performance.
A network of hardware and software devices, including the newly updated version of v4 POL, enable a performance to make use of a specific working style developed by Marcel.lì and defined as “systematurgy”.
COTRONE transcends traditional forms of theatrical drama, generating new contexts where digital interaction augments reality, and various interfaces allow the actor or the spectators to expand on their own typical roles.

SYSTEMATURGY

The aforementioned Systematurgy is used as the work methodology for the dramaturgy and the narration.
This neologism, invented by Marcel.lì, joining the words ‘system’ and ‘dramaturgy’ together, is a technique where technology plays a fundamental role.
Just as cinema took on the theatrical and paratheatrical techniques of the 19th century, applying them in a new artform which made use of new innovative technologies, Systematurgy uses theatre and the visual arts to generate new artistic contexts characterised by information technology. So Systematurgy is relatively young, and perhaps this is why it relies on the micro-narration technique, rather short narrative nuclei constructed on the bones of the dramaturgical text, which enable the efficient organisation of material for composition through interactive management.
The main tool used for applying Systematurgy is v4 POL software created by panspermia S.L. which allows the coordination and synchronisation of the other applications which are used for the interactive performance, such as Pure Data, Open Frameworks, GEM and more.

Première at Prospettiva Festival Teatro Stabile di Torino.