Another stunning piece of theatre from the Papalagi troupe this evening in the Teatro Dei Differenti. To celebrate the opening of SCHESIS, the new centre for mental health in Fornaci di Barga, the Papalagi theatre company, who have been active in this area since 1996, put on a new production which they called ” the return of the ship in fools” Based around Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff, or The Ship of Fools, a long, moralistic poem written in 1494 which expounded the idea of putting all the mad people on to a ship and letting the current take them away. The Papalagi explored the possibility of that ship returning home.
Did the “mad” know they were mad? and where the sane convinced that they were not mad? the argument was turned on its head a few times during the evening with the narrator, the painter and poet Sergio Fini (site here) at one point asking his audience if they thought it was right to be entertained by the real/ pseudo-mad.
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Once again the Director, Satyamo Hernandez and his crew used a series of techniques whereby both audience and actors were changed into Spect-actors.The term created by Augusto Boal, an innovative and influential Brazilian theatrical director, writer and politician. He used the term to describe those engaged in Forum Theater. It refers to the dual role of those involved in the process as both being spectator and actor, as they both observe and create dramatic meaning and action in any performance. The dividing line between audience and actors getting very blurred. The actors coming off the stage and into the audience and at the end even members of the audience joining them on stage.
Sergio Fini’s visual work also appeared in the production in the form of 6 large paintings each one depicting different forms of madness. This evening they only explored three of the possibilities so effectively we only got a chance to see 50% of the Ship of Fools. We look forward to seeing the other half some time in the near future.
Stultifera Navis (The Ship of Fools): The Medieval Satire of Sebastian Brant
In 1494, humanist Sebastian Brant published Das Narrenschiff, or The Ship of Fools, a long, moralistic poem written in the German language. Born in Strasbourg, Germany circa 1457, Brant earned degrees in philosopy and law at the University of Basel, then continued there as a lecturer. He wrote a law textbook and several poems prior to Das Narrenschiff, as well as editing books and broadsides for local printers. Brant was a loyalist to the Holy Roman Empire, and when Basel joined the Swiss Confederation in 1499, Brant returned to imperial Strasbourg. There he worked for the city in various administrative capacities until his death in 1521.
In Das Narrenschiff, Brant describes 110 assorted follies and vices, each undertaken by a different fool, devoting chapters to such offenses as Arrogance Toward God, Marrying for Money, and Noise in Church. Some of the chapters are united by the common theme of a ship which will bear the assembled fools to Narragonia, the island of fools. Das Narrenschiff proved so popular that it went through multiple editions, and was translated into Latin, French, English, Dutch, and Low German.