Earthbound
by Marta CuscunàBy and with: Marta Cuscunà
set design: Paola Villani
assistant director: Marco Rogante
animatronic design: Paola Villani
animatronic construction: Paola Villani e Marco Rogante
creatures sculpting and modelling: João Rapaz, Janaína Drummond, Mariana Fonseca, Rodrigo Pereira, Catarina Santiago, Francisco Tomàs, (Oldskull FX-Lisbon)
dramaturg: Giacomo Raffaelli
sound design: Michele Braga
light design: Claudio “Poldo” Parrino
technical direction: Massimo Gianaroli;
stage manager, head electrician and sound master: Marco Rogante
stage technician: Simone Spangaro / Jurgen Koci
Production: Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, CSS Teatro stabile di innovazione del FVG, Etnorama
Being on the edge of extinction is no longer a metaphor.
To get out of the destructive attitude of GAME OVER that this awareness could bring, Donna Haraway writes Staying with the trouble, a speculative essay that includes short stories of science fiction where she imagines possible futures in which the human species joins forces with other species to heal the planet and taking care of it again (and better).
Inspired by Haraway’s stories, the show features a small colony of individuals who moved to over-exploited and damaged areas to heal them, thanks to symbiotic collaboration with non-human partners.
They are|Earthbound|
|Earthbound| are humans who are implanted with the genes of endangered creatures in order to preserve the endangered species they are melted with. The purpose of the symbiont is to start a learning process that leads it to live in symbiosis with its double animal or plant, so as to create a new perspective to rethink the adaptation and coexistence of man with the natural environment.
|Earthbound| are aware that no species acts alone, not even the human one and that it is not possible to distinguish organism from the environment. Thus they aim at the drastic reduction of human presence on Earth to cope with the exhaustion of the now almost drained natural resources.
“Make kin, not babies” is the first commandment of a birth control policy based on partially replacing blood ties with those of care.
For the |Earthbound|, the birth of a child is a collective choice, rare and precious. A choice the whole community is responsible for. At least three parents are assigned to each child.
|Earthbound| are made real on stage through the animatronic techniques designed by Paola Villani and inspired by Australian artist Patricia Piccinini. The result is a science-fiction monologue for an actress and some puppets, where the contemporary eco-feminist thought is turn into a show and the Italian Puppet Theatre tradition is contaminated with innovative animation techniques.
|Earthbound| is a neologism invented by Bruno Latour to meet the contemporary need for a new definition of our species on the basis of a new relationship between it and the Earth, which is no longer limited to blind attachment to the ground, as the word “human” implies (from homo, hominis, closely related to the term humus, “earth”). The climate issue requires us to be sensitive again and to be connected to Gaia, to its multiple ties and symbiotic relationships. Overcoming the fracture between Man and Nature, recognizing that the environment influences the development of the individual that exists thanks to symbiotic relationships with other species such as bacteria, viruses and fungi. This new approach to the human being as holobyont would allow us to find answers to ecological changes. According to Latour, we need to be no longer simply “Human” but |Earthbound|
If “It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories” – as Donna Haraway affirms, |Earthbound| is one of the possible stories of the new world we may inhabit in the near future.
photo: Guido Mencari
