Founded in 2005 by Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli – author and director –, Alessandro Ferroni – director and sound designer –, Alice Palazzi – actress and project coordinator –, Maddalena Parise – researcher and visual artist – lacasadargilla draws together a number of actors, musicians, dramaturgs and visual artists, building an extended ensemble that works together on performances, installations, special projects and curatorships.

lacasadargilla creates its works starting from original texts, literary adaptations and contemporary plays. It builds its projects on the concepts of time and mythographies, as well as on the linguistic, psychic and personal legacies that bind us to our past and to our future – a future we can already have a glimpse of. The ensemble also focuses on the process of corruption and rewriting of memories, as well as on stories that open up to the uncanny (unheimlich), a true “exterminating angel” of reality. Recently, the ensemble has started condensing its reflections around the broad theme of the extinction of all those delicate and complex systems that shape relationships, imaginations, anthropologies and ecosystems. Extinction as a way to reflect on the world after us, in which the void created by the end of humanity is the impossible horizon of the world as we know it.

lacasadargilla follows musical, thematic and associative principles, allowing the public to process a text as an imaginative and thoughtful movement. All performances have an architectural approach, with a focus on linguistic and cinematic devices as well as on physical scores: from the business going on with mother tongues, to the minutiae of family jargons, to language understood as affection, survival and resistance. Whether they are plasticly grafted on a stage performance or declined as installations made of different expressive elements, the ensemble’s visual works stem always from a narrative matrix too.

A peculiar artistic vocation of lacasadargilla is the ability to create special projects that extend to several different arts. Devices, events and ‘non-theatrical’ experiments conceived as an opportunity to reflect and operate around a theme or a text and its main themes, building a dialogue between theatre and different disciplines – from visual arts, to philosophy, from publishing to cinema. But also creating full-fledged installations / performances to talk about themes and issues of our present with devices closer to contemporary art.

​

Theatre productions / selection: La casa d’argilla, original text (Parma, Teatro Due; Milan, CRT 2006-08); Ascesa e rovina della città di Mahagonny by Bertolt Brecht (Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre; Naples International Theatre Festival 2008-10); Foto di gruppo in un interno original text (Rome, Teatro Palladium 2009); Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser (Festival Inequilibrio; Rome, Teatro India 2011-12); Katzelmacher by Fassbinder (Moscow Stanislavskj Festival 2012); The Testament of This Day by Edward Bond, radio drama (broadcast on Rai Radio 3 2014); Lear di Edward Bond (Rome, Teatro India; Milan, Teatro dell’Elfo 2015-17); Les Adieux! Parole salvate dalle fiamme. Un melologo per il nuovo millennio multimedia performance (Romaeuropa Festival; Parma, TeatroDue; broadcast live on Radio3 2017-18); When the Rain Stops Falling by Andrew Bovell (Bologna, Arena del Sole, 2019; national tour, 2020-2022), awarded the UBU prize for best director, best costume design, best foreign play; Distant Lights from Dark Places by Andrew Bovell, radio drama (broadcast live on Radio 3 2019); Arrival. Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang (Rome, Teatro India; Modena, ERT 2020); Heart’s Desire by Caryl Churchill (Rome, Teatro Vascello, 2021). Upcoming productions: Il Ministero della Solitudine, original play (2022).

​

Site-specific installations, special projects, curatorship / selection: Slides. Ritagli del tempo, installation (Parma, Milan 2007-08); Art You Lost? 1000 persone per un’opera d’arte, installation-performance in collaboration with Muta Imago, Santasangre (Rome, Teatro India; Santarcangelo Theatre Festival, 2012-14); Borderlines. A Multidisciplinary Project Around Edward Bond’s Lear, special project (Rome, Milan 2015-17); IF/Invasioni (dal) Futuro special project, awarded the Prizes “Estate Romana” 2014-16; 2017-19; 2020-22; Ogni volta unica la fine del mondo, curatorial project on the theme of ‘sustainability’ for the Summer Season of Piccolo Teatro, Milan (2021), in collaboration with Marta Cuscunà and Marco D’Agostin.

​

Since 2021 lacasadargilla is associated artist of Piccolo Teatro Milano.

​