2023-2024 theater season: “August in Osage County” on stage at the Teatro delle Muse

2023-2024 theater season: “August in Osage County” is on stage at the Teatro delle Muse.

Ancona. From November 16th to 19th al Theater of the Muses the show goes on stage August in Osage County di Tracy letts. The comedy, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and on which the famous film was based The Secrets of Osage County, is directed by Filippo Dini.

The show stars Anna Bonaiuto, Manuela Mandracchia, Filippo Dini, Fabrizio Contri, Orietta Notari, Andrea Di Casa, Fulvio Pepe, Stefania Medri, Valeria Angelozzi, Edoardo Sorgente, Caterina Tieghi, Valentina Spaletta Tavella.

Translation of the text by Monica Capuani. Dramaturg and assistant director Carlo Orlando, scenes of Gregorio Zurla, costumes of Alessio Rosati, lights of Pasquale Mari, music by Aleph Viola, sound of Claudio Tortorici.

Tracy letts is a multifaceted and award-winning American actor and playwright. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Playwriting in 2008 for August: Osage County, which became in 2014 Secrets of Osage County, a film nominated for two Oscars with Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. Filippo Dini directs the first Italian version of this restless comedy, overflowing with unforgettable characters and moments of authentic cruelty.

August in Osage County tells a family drama of rare intensity and unpredictability, in which the aridity of the context – the sultry summer of Great Plains of Oklahoma – is mirrored with the interior life of the protagonists. In the county of Osage, Oklahoma, live Violet and her husband Beverly Weston, an alcoholic poet. One day the man mysteriously disappears and the family is hastily reunited, bringing back old unpleasant memories. The discovery of the body and his funeral will kick off an exciting and fun showdown.

writes Tracy Letts: «The hope of every playwright is to be able to draw on universal themes through narration. With many Americans I share the story of families – mostly descendants of Irish, German or Dutch farmers – who forged their ethics from the Depression years to the Baby Boom. I sympathize with the multigenerational conflict that inevitably arises when those who have nothing have left their pride and guilt to those who have wanted nothing. August: Osage County is my attempt to explore this generational schism and Midwestern sensibility, because, as Sam Shepard said when asked why he wrote so much about family, “What else is there?” August in Osage County can give us a chance to learn how the dynamics of "family" continue to shape us and our approach to the world."

states Filippo Dini: «This text is the last link in a wonderful trend, that of Ibsen, Chekhov, Pirandello and then Eduardo: the bourgeois drama, which focuses on family dynamics. But Tracy Letts talks to us about contemporary society, and therefore can afford a crudeness that bitterly characterizes our era. Throughout this comedy we witness clashes, revenge, frustrations and ancient and never-satisfied resentments within a large family, where reigns a matriarch suffering from cancer, wicked and addicted to medicines, who does nothing but violently confront all his family members, first and foremost his daughters. A furious hatred reigns in the Weston house, nourished by the degeneration of every single personality that inhabits it, fomented by personal failures, envy and disappointments of an entire life, where anger and aggression seem to be the only possible languages, the only code allowed to communicate in that family. A wild and primordial reality seems to animate this dysfunctional family (as it has been defined) grappling with the last act of its very troubled journey. They tried to love each other, they tried to dialogue, they tried for years to understand each other: enough is enough, after that day (which corresponds to the day in which dad is buried) every family bond will be definitively broken and they will probably never see each other again. Through Letts' characters we have the opportunity to confront a part of us, which has to do with what we reflect on the people around us, to whom we inevitably give a piece of our being, made up of everything that nourishes us and poisons at that precise moment. This is enriched by comparison, expressed in the most disparate ways, and here the sharing begins. This whole process seems to be very sick in our era, it seems to suffer from an incurable cancer, like the one in Violet's mouth, which prevents us from communicating, precisely, from re-establishing human transmission between individuals."

Filippo Dini he trained at the Scuola dello Stabile in Genoa and at the beginning of his acting career he was directed by important figures of Italian theatre, including Carlo Cecchi, Giorgio Barberio Corsetti and Valerio Binasco. In the cinema he worked with Nanni Moretti, Pupi Avati, the Taviani brothers, Donato Carrisi, Francesca Comencini, the D'Innocenzo brothers. His first directorial, Two brothers di Fausto Paravidino, is from 2000. In 2015 he obtained his first important national recognition as a director, the Le Maschere del Teatro Italiano award for the staging ofIvanov by Chekhov, renewed in 2019 for So it is (if you like) by Pirandello, produced by TST. Dini manages to find the balance of his own creative research in his work by alternating great classics with theatrical adaptations of literary or cinematographic works and new contemporary drama texts. Since 2021 he has been resident director of Stable Theater of Turin. In recent seasons he has been the director and actor of That's how it is if you like by Luigi Pirandello, Doll house by Ibsen, The Spank by Hanif Kureishi, Ice by Bryony Lavery, e The crucible by Arthur Miller.

Dini (which had previously obtained a Hystrio-Anct award, a Golden Grail award, three Le Maschere del Teatro Italiano awards and the Critics Award), just recently received at the The Masks of the Italian Theater Awards 2023 two important recognitions: the prize for Best director and what like Best Actor for the show The crucible by Arthur Miller, produced by the Stabile di Torino together with the Stabili di Bolzano and Naples.

 Ticketing 071 52525 biglietteria@teatrodellemuse.org and on www.vivaticket.com

The activity of MARCHE THEATRE_Theatre of Significant Cultural Interest is supported by Municipality of Ancona/Department of Culture, Marche Region/Department of Culture, Ministry of Culture, Chamber of Commerce of the Marche  in collaboration with the sponsors: Frittelli Maritime Group e Marchigiano Bank.

 www.marcheteatro.it