NOSFERATU'S DREAM
(Passioni d'amore)

Contagious show for puppets and actors

The vampire is a myth of modern imagination. We've been hearing for two centuries of creatures who suck the blood of other people, beings who are no more alive and nevertheless yet not dead, who know how to transform into wolf or bat, who can become invisible, enormous or microscopic, and who can control the elements.
As well known, we can find the origin of vampire in middle Europe at the beginning of 18th century.
Many interpretations have been given about vampirism, from Voltaire to Marx, who both saw it as a metaphor of man's exploitation of other men; then we can find the 20th century ones, like Deleuze and Guattari, who present Dracula as the symbol of a positive animal essence.
We would like to recall the equation "vampirism literature" made by Michel Tournier ("Le vol du Vampire", Gallimard, 1983), who wrote that a book "is a virtuality, an empty, lifeless being", "the writer knows it and when he publishes a book he releases among the anonymous crowds of men and women a cloud of paper birds, withered vampires, thirst for blood, who plance at random, searching for readers whenever a book meets a reader.
He rises with his warmth and his dreams".
Stealing the beautiful Tournier images, we like to think to an equation, where vampirism is the theater, and our "Nosferatu" an empty being waiting to fill his scenic life with spectator's warmth and emotions.

The performance is, as well as "Lancelot of the Lake", another sign of our interest in myths, and in their power of fascination. But don't be mistaken: this "Nosferatu's Dream" is not a play about horror and vampires, it has nothing truculent, ferocious and bloody, in conclusion it is not what you might think at first sight.
It is a secret play under, but it deals with the secret of children, the dream of infancy which everybody keeps up deep inside.
The Vampire, Count Dracula, is nothing but a puppet, on a journey towards London, suspended as if by magic in a sky without clouds, a metaphor of desire and passion.
And that puppet wears a red thin little scarf.
Which of you knows what a dream is made of ?
Children know it: therefore they don't read paper on the train, but they keep their noses crushed on the window, uttering mysterious shouting.
This play is dedicated to them, and to all grown up people who, like Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Leone Werth, have not forgotten they were babies, once upon a time.

The ship in the bottle was built by William Monticelli in 1974, in two months of careful work; it is a English clipper, the historical "Cutty Sark", 3 mastes, 2000 knots. Photos by Enrico Sotgiu, August 1984 and Mauro Foli, April 1994. The noise of the wind in the dusty corridors of the labirinth, and of the sea in the nocturne visions of the Count were ralized by "Coop ATMO", in Bastia Umbra, August 1984.

Liberamente ispirato
agli scritti di
Freely imbued with the
writings of
J. L. Borges, B. Stoker,
A. d Saint-Exupery

Testo e regia /
Text and production
MARCO MARTINELLI

Scene / Scenes
GIANNI PLAZZI

Pupazzi / Puppets
MAURO E WILLIAM
MONTICELLI

Costumi Costumes
IVONNE FERRARI
Voci recitanti /
Acting voices
Ivano Marescotti,
Danilo Conti
Ermanna Montanari,
Sara Plazzi
Ruggero Sintoni,
Claudio Casadio
Andrea Monticelli,
Serena Simoni
Maria e Marco Martinelli
Colonna Sonora / Sound track
GIANNI TRIOSSI
Effetti speciali / Special effects
COOP. ATMO

Animatori /
Puppet players
MONICA BARTOLINI,
ANDREA E MAURO
MONTICELLI