MAZE @ Teatro Cantiere Florida: art in a caress

by Sonia Coppoli and Chiara Guarducci, Gufetto Press, 02/11/2020

MAZE, on tour since 2018, is the second production of the Unterwasser Company. He arrives in Florence on October 15, at the Teatro Cantiere Florida, which is always attentive to the contemporary. This magical work, pervaded with tenderness, has the gift of kidnapping us, giving us access to the rich unconscious material in which the soul swims and feeds. We appreciate this flowering, this saving caress, even more so in a historical phase oppressed by fears and disorientation.

Colored objects are sprinkled on the stage as if to draw a labyrinth ... of dream catchers or traps? When darkness falls, the screen canvas lights up, slowly comes alive. Embryonic sounds and images emerge. A passage of light, like a golden reverberation, returns between the black filaments that float inside an amniotic water, inside that magma common to every possible origin.

The story of this live performance needs no words, it shows its dreamlike power from the first images that move the secret place of a premiere. This first expands with its enigmatic warmth throughout the show. It is a non-land and what matters is to let oneself be carried away, to feel and not to grasp and recognize. Our codes pertaining to control melt like butter, we are in the midst of a liquid imagination that pierces reality. A blink, an eyelid that opens and closes. The protagonist remains invisible, it's all subjective, with careful changes of shot. The poetic figure is incessant, the soundtrack blends admirably with this journey of extended times. The gaze of this creature, from when it comes into the world to when it leaves it without tearing, will never lose the charm of an infinity that opens up from every detail. It is this transfiguring vision of the membrane and the medulla of the 'film' that manages to condense the essential traces of a life into a few steps.

From the cradle the creature can be seen close to the suspended toys, the faces of the parents and the blue wall of their room. The predominant colors are blue, red and ocher. Growing up, he climbs the rides in the gardens and it is from the shapes of these structures that he sees the city and the others. When she too enters the darkest and most intermittent circle of adults. To give physicality to the scenes and to the figures that flow are the presences, the hand-made objects that the three performers lift and move inside the projector light with surprising skill and precision. A graphics rich in pictorial references, faces reminiscent of Calder, Modigliani and Schiele, forms a la Mirò, multiplied stairs and doors that evoke Escher's geometry, each image is memorable. Aesthetics have a correspondence with the ecstatic and never give way. The flesh of the body enters from the dream in which he immerses himself after an anesthesia at the hospital: a slow and hypnotic swim in the pool, taken from under the surface, the arms move harmoniously to open the water and continue, continue, until an abstract, indistinct landscape, alive with the deepest pulsations, as if to take the beginning into an even further away. And finally the dream or the memory of love, in a dance between very light figures and the appearance of the puppeteer who moves them, perhaps a metaphor for the artist and for each of us. But the readings are always multiple, to each his awakenings, his suggestions. Ocean, seagulls and boats of any morning. End. A very rare delicacy, all female. The emotion is palpable. We leave this atmosphere unwillingly, and before leaving the theater, we approach the magical objects, those buildings, those three-dimensional sculptures of wire, cardboard and wood that have allowed this beauty.

From the wonder of amazement to the irony of the surreal.

by Michele Di Donato, il Pickwick, 28/02/2020

Maze, a wordless show that speaks with the poetry of images, sounds, showing us a story built with the polysemic of the instruments used; it is like watching a cartoon looking at it from within, while it is being made, with the game of creation discovered, offered on sight by the three authors / creators on stage (Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti, Giulia De Canio), yet without this going into no way to invalidate the magic of creative invention, the awe and wonder of the realization.

In reading the references that inspired the conception of Maze it would be necessary (useful), for those who then have the task of writing a review, first of all to study, sift through, browse these references in order to interpret, decode, find interpretations that outline layers of meaning for what perhaps escapes or has escaped a first approach, to "read" the work in its implications, in the folds of its facets, in the meanders of that labyrinth - which is precisely what the word “maze” in English means, “labyrinth” - in which instead we consciously choose to get lost. And to let ourselves be carried away; following the flow of images, sounds, evocations, of a story that has the blurred outlines of an impressionistic drawing and the multiform score of an expressionist work.

So we take note - and in spans we recognize - the threads of existence of Maria Lai's woven fabrics or the Modiglianesque inspiration of the figures, just as we ascertain that the iron wires that stylize profiles of human faces, or sculptures, are inspired by Alexander Calder by Edoardo Tresoldi the metal cages that outline the appearance of large buildings, while the sound suggestion of Seven Variations accompanies us making together with the original music of Posho from soft sound carpet to shadow games that are transformed into concrete images of a story. History that is frescoed on the backdrop for successive and evocative paintings, following the thread of a life from its blossoming, shown when it is still only amniotic promise to exist and accompanied along the cadenced and significant stages of an entire existence, shown in subjective, offering our eye the possibility of coinciding with that of the protagonist of the story, experiencing its crucial phases, the happy and critical moments, synthesized by imaginary leaps with the tenuous lyricism of images that follow one another to compose a complete and coherent dramaturgy . We take note of what we recognize and take note of what we can learn; yet we discover that the “philology” of the staging, however important and significant, is not what interests us most; much more, witnessing Maze, we like to let ourselves be guided along the labyrinth of evocations following the thread of suggestions, abandoning ourselves to this delicate and light score that through the magic - even if discovered and offered in vision - of the shadows leaves us the evidence of a candid sense of amazement.

MAZE, the vertigo of a subjective

by Gemma Criscuoli, Le Cronache di Salerno, 03/02/2020

Becoming a character, feeding on his feelings, remembering the essential purpose of the theater: giving life new possibilities. It leads the audience to the vertigo of a long subjective "Maze", the installation by Unterwasser which saw Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio on the stage of the social center as part of Mutaverso, the artistic project of Vincenzo Albano. Matteo Rubagotti designed the lights, while the music bears Posho's signature. The "tools of the trade" of the three artists - water, cardboard, wood, transparencies, models, small light sources, plastic, extremely stylized wire faces and therefore universal - are from the very beginning under the eyes of the spectators, orchestrated according to a refined play of lighting to project on the screen figures and situations captured by the eye of the protagonist, which coincides with that of the audience. It is also significant that only in the end it is understood that it is a woman, because anyone can identify with this open gaze on a familiar but unpredictable world, because it is the source and mirror of conflicting emotions. It is part of the vocation of the stage to show the artificial nature of each movement and to broaden its suggestions. Based on an imagery linked to Tresoldi, Modigliani and Emily Dickinson follow the stories of a female presence from conception to the discovery of love between missteps and lyrical suspensions. There is a disagreement between an existence that obeys the rhythms of one's own interiority and the alienation of a progress that does not really know how to be: the caressing peace of the trees from the window of childhood gives way to the frenetic coming and going of shadows (why not one is nothing but this in a material world) that shamelessly supplants a merry carousel of children. The final roundabout of the lovers will at least partially compensate for the sense of imprisonment of days that empty like the glass greedily drunk or that pursue strong and destructive sensations (the crowding of faces in a disco, united in a single overwhelming impulse, acts as a prelude to a drip in a squalidly devoid of everything, clear allusion to an ethyl coma). The dip in the pool will turn into a free movement in the sea, because only by losing oneself in one's anxiety for freedom, without fetters or categories of any kind, is it possible to find oneself and give meaning to one's breath. The starry sky that slowly sinks into the darkness in the conclusion is heartfelt hope: it is up to us to decide what will be worth opening our eyes tomorrow.

MAZE at Teatro del Cerchio. A labyrinth of many emotions.

by Valeria Ottolenghi, Gazzetta di Parma, 15/01/2020

We had met MAZE of the UnterWasser company this summer at the Sansepolcro festival "Kilowatt" and we had grasped the complex charm of refined poetry and sophisticated craftsmanship, leaving the desire to be able to see it again soon to enjoy its enchantment again, reworking of immersed experiences in a quietly dreamlike condition.

And this boundary pleasure between puppetry, shadows, figurative arts and cinema was able to be renewed in Parma, at the auditorium in via Cuneo, thanks to the Teatro del Cerchio, also for the happy link with Inbox, the review of shows in race among the most qualified in Italy (In-box finalist 2019), an important hospitality of rare wonder, the winning company, in Radicondoli, of the first edition of the Valter Ferrara prize.

At the entrance the public could observe on the stage an infinite number of creations of the most varied materials, in wire, inspired by Edoardo Tresoldi, of suspended objects in the Calder style (small branches in particular) thin shapes like Giacometti, but also water, matte paper folded into a fan, round shapes that can be perceived as mini worlds that would then be revealed in the action, and much more half hidden from view: Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio, authors, actresses / animators move silently in shape ritual, on sight, with caution and grace, among those objects that therefore give life, through multiple light sources, to the images projected on a large screen at the end of the stage. If the visual references are perceptible, it is more difficult to recognize the poetic inspirations, cited, for example, Emily Dickinson, Etty Hillesum, and Wislawa Szymborska. In the precious soundtrack there are no words even if at times you can catch a sort of background noise of voices, for children playing, for adults grouped together, perhaps in the subway. Backgrounds that change, pure visions of colors, sounds, movement, but also situations that imply stories, narrative elements that can enrich the spectators themselves with meaning, emotional participation, so for the hospital in subjective, with the surgeons bent over the bed operative, or for the dance in pairs by the sea.

You use many film techniques between tracking shots and close-ups. The actions in the water are particularly magical, swimming in the pool but also touching a choppy seabed with your fingers. Long applause for "maze", a labyrinth of many emotions.

MAZE: in the labyrinth of light and shadow that is life

by Francesca Ferrari, Teatropoli, 12/01/2020

It is not easy to approach the genre of theater proposed by the Unterwasser company, a synergistic and talented female collective that on Saturday 11 January presented at the Toscanini Auditorium, the current seat of the Teatro del Cerchio, "Maze", a finalist production at the latest InBox Award. It is not simple as we are used today to understand the rhythm of life, the time of Being and Doing, however disarming and surprising it is to admit to ourselves that, yes, poetry, charm, lightness, grace, craftsmanship, all ingredients. of which this work is full and generous in returning, are precisely the elements that more than others lack in our habitual daily perception.

This is the apparent difficulty that one encounters but which is overcome quickly, in the immanence of a story that proceeds through images and visions in which to reflect and find oneself. We rediscover ourselves as children and perhaps a little naive, fragile, delicate, sensitive, certainly less intransigent and more welcoming, admiring with amazement the meticulous, detailed and gently suggestive creations, made with wire, wood, nets, cartons, materials poor, small sculptures and animated architectures on sight, choreographed by the wisdom of the three good performers Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio and enlivened by the light sources which, manipulated with care and attention, return projections of shapes, lines on the large screen of the backdrop , places, faces, meanings. A dance of signs, existential fragments and sensations. We lose the help of dialogue in understanding the story that comes through an older and more universal communication channel, that of images, here evocative of encounters, salient stages of growth, memories, dreams, pains, feelings.

It is a precious and refined puppet theater that draws on the tradition of shadow theater, consciously makes it its own, and supports it with bewitching strength through the refined sound fabric signed by Posho. Bodies, objects, noises, music, poetic and aesthetic inspirations (especially with explicit reference to Calder's iron portraits), drawings, figures, hatches, shadows and lights combine to suggest the dramaturgical trace, which is nothing but the story of a life, from conception to adulthood.

The labyrinth of the title is therefore the one that unravels in the mind of the beholder and, by cinematic illusion, of the beholder behind that first perspective plane, that is us. In this way, we become, by an ephemeral but effective reflection, the protagonists of the tracking and subjective shots illuminated on the screen, of the first blink of an eye, of the playful moments spent in the park during childhood, of memories linked to a pleasant natural landscape or to a noisy and frenetic glimpse citizen, of intimate youthful disturbances perhaps caused by superficial acquaintances, of the subdued pain of a hospitalization, of stairs and doors that intersect and open like sudden, ungovernable thoughts; and then a long swim, a deep dive, a sort of symbolic rebirth, which begins in a swimming pool but magically crosses imaginative sea depths, until it emerges in the discovery of a love and commutes into a luminous firmament (where abandon yourself and calmly move away?)

A dreamlike universe overflowing with life, soul, light and matter in which one remains pleasantly suspended, surprisingly captivated by the complexity and beauty of the simplest things.

UnterWasser: delicate gazes between metropolis and dreams

by Francesca Romana Lino, Platealmente, 04/12/19.

The beauty of theater, especially the contemporary one, is the multiplicity of its expressive forms. With the age of chamber theater or bourgeois theater gone, for example, civil or narrative theater, it more often happens today that theater is performance.

And, here too, there is more than one way to understand it.

If it is true, in fact, that, like words, even categories are nothing more than a shortcut of thought, the ancient philosophers taught that thought thinks being. The Shakespearean Romeo, however, pointed out: "There are more things in heaven and on earth, Mercutio, than your philosophy dreams of", as if to say that reality often exceeds the limits of thinkability.

And so it happens that the irrepressible machine of theatrical fantasy dreams of hypnotic labyrinths with a rare delicacy, as happens in UnterWasser's "Maze".

Finalist at In-box 2019 and for this reason in rerun on 1 December at PimOff (among the partners of the circuit), this live performance offers the dreamlike vision of an existence, playing, flawlessly, with an innovative form of theater of shadow to projection of images. In subjective and through the eyes of its protagonist - more: even through the blinking of the eyelids, in the scenes of her childhood experience -, she shows us the flow of life in the labyrinthine liquidity of a city. Even before birth he pushes himself to… who knows, perhaps towards a personal vision of life after life. What is surprising is the minuteness of certain details or the extraordinary perspective effectiveness of when you look at the world from the most decentralized angles as it happens in reality.

There is a lot of cinematic in all of this.

And the only way to make it, theatrically, could only go through that contamination, which marks so much of contemporary artistic expression. So Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio - the three souls of UnterWasser - choose to cancel themselves, almost, to put themselves at the service of their project. We see them on stage, yes, but the meaning of their existence is to look at them - and, here too, in more than one sense.

They look at each other, because it is only through their manipulation that the mobile installation comes to life.

On the stage, a multitude of artifacts and carousels with a multi-evocative artistic suggestion: from the continuous line drawing by Steinberg, to the softness of the Modigliani line, from the permeability and lightness of Tresoldi's wire mesh architectures to the production of wire portraits by Calder . What the three young girls, but with a solid academic and university background, do is to animate all this with a system of lights, which, playing on the imprinted movement, creates an intentionally naïve cinematic film effect. We work to share the experience of enchantment, indispensable for us, through the search for a refined aesthetic, the result of a careful study of materials and techniques, they declare about their work. And it is precisely the enchantment, the effect it had on the public. The light, the movement and their skilful manipulation of the minimalistic wire shapes manage to give us an inexplicable reality effect thanks also to the often realistic sound setting; only rarely does it dematerialize into minimalist, suspended acoustic carpets.

Then, they look at each other because, by choosing to animate their stage machines on sight, they offer the public the opportunity to spy on the process.

They seem to tell us that what matters is not the finished product. Unlike in a reassuring museum exhibition, it is not the perfection of the concluded, of the pacified, that we are interested in showing us. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the fragility and unpredictability of everything that is in progress, as, at any moment, each of us is, in its givenness and existential precariousness. So, even if there is no lack of narrative breaks due to the technical time required to switch from one stage machine to another, this is not a scandal. They tell us about them, who move on tiptoe - almost vestal in the sacred circle -, now converging on the same scenic machine, now making the effect of several machines converge in images with superimposed and amplified evocativeness.

Despite the delicate lyricism of the whole work, perhaps the most evocative scenes are those related to water.

Unterwasser, which in German means precisely underwater, seem to move perfectly at ease in that element about which they write: "Sott 'acqua is a basin of theatrical research where the poetic, evocative and communicative potential of the theater is investigated. figure. [...] Under water it is also dark, deep, dense. Deep are the themes that ask us to be plumbed and brought to light. Under the water the voice has no language, words become sound and meanings are grasped with the eyes. We are looking for a visual, universal, silent theater ”So, following their words once again, all that remains is to break the mirror of the surface and immerse yourself.

A gaze into MAZE's liquid labyrinth

by Mauro Caron, Into The Wonderland, 04/12/19

Last week the PimOff gave space to Maze, a work of the UnterWasser company, composed by Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio. Maze is a hybrid work, which mixes puppetry, performance, sculpture, visual arts and cinema (without forgetting the fundamental musical and sound contribution signed by Posho).

Upon entering the room, the impression is to find a broken and scattered Meccano on the stage floor, an incomprehensible repertoire of objects or parts of them. When the lights go out, three women dressed in black overalls enter this sign space, a kind of benign park (before becoming the weavers of human destinies, the Fates protected pregnancy and birth), who give back shape, soul and life to those incomplete and inanimate objects. The show to watch, even if the three figures in black never really disappear from our view, is not on the stage, but on the white screen of the back wall, which lights up and comes alive thanks to the lights projected by the three girls from various sources. lights scattered on the ground. In front of the light, the three performer mobiles of pieces of wood, iron or cardboard, cut out silhouettes, sculptures in iron wire, glass along which water drops, objects, hands and even the feet flow are made to pass actresses.

At the beginning it is just a greenish limbo, where shapes similar to sticks and sticks float, furrowed by reflections of light, which become more and more intense. Later we will see two stylized faces, drawn with iron wire, appearing on the screen, one male and one female, approaching and moving away, while a dark diaphragm drops rhythmically to obscure the screen for a moment. Then we will see the tops of bare trees pass above us on the screen, then a playground, the face of a curious child approaching. To our surprise, we discover that we are looking at the world with the eyes of a child, first inside the womb, then in her own bedroom, in a pram, and so on.

If the animation and the story without words are purely object, made and aroused with disparate and unsuspected materials, the whole show is rigorously built on a subjective gaze, marked by the blinking of the eyelids, while the play of movement and distance from the source luminous simulates the focus / out of focus dialectic of the attention of the gaze or of a camera.

The protagonist is accompanied - or rather it is her gaze that guides us - through various phases and various moments of her life: the landscape that changes outside the window, with massive high-rises (actually wire-like reticulate) that take the place of trees, the growing noise of cars and traffic, the presence of other people, even a surgical intervention in the hospital, then the enchanted discovery of swimming, first in the pool, then in the open sea.

The dialectic between the geometric and hostile forms of the human world (the buildings, corridors and stairways of houses and hospitals) and the fluid and free dimension of water (the amniotic fluid of the first sequence, the water of the swimming pool or the seabed) runs through the whole show, which closes as in a circle in an area dimension, where the birds that furrowed the sky at first become seagulls, the masts of sails on the sea or the street lamps of a promenade where the young protagonist dances together with a partner. Before the screen melts into a star-studded black sky, and the liquid cycle of life takes another turn.

The authors cite the influence of poetesses such as Mariangela Gualtieri, Emily Dickinson, Etty Hillesum, Wislawa Szymborska, Laurie Anderson as the source of their work - devoid of dialogues and words - and Steinberg's continuous line drawing and softness as visual references. of the Modigliani section, the sewn drawings by Maria Lai, the wire mesh architectures of Tresoldi and the mobile sculptures of Calder.

Undoubtedly, the UnterWassers have succeeded in their intent to create, in a naïve, almost childish and fairytale-like dimension, their own suggestive lyrical and dreamlike language, capable however of its own recognizable and appreciable narrative.

In addition to the aforementioned evocative sound design created by Posho, the fundamental lighting design by Matteo Rubagotti remains to be remembered.

When visual art merges with performative art. MAZE by UnterWasser.

by Susanna Battisti, Fogli d’arte, 01/12/2019

There are shows that it would be good to think about for a long time before writing about. The passage of time allows you to fully savor the power of the images imprinted in the mind and to weigh their emotional impact.

This is particularly true for the magical Maze of the young all-female group UnterWasser, which has been experimenting for some time with the possible interactions between figurative art and theater. The young members of the research group, Giulia De Canio, Valeria Bianchi and Aurora Buzzetti, come from different artistic experiences and their work finds a meeting point in the contamination of the experiences of each one: puppetry, sculpture and visual art. Their theater makes use of music, but not of words, to transport the viewer into a highly evocative dream world in which to get lost and then find oneself.

Maze was presented at Kilowatt Festival at the end of July and the following day the ensemble obtained the prestigious Walter Ferrara 2019 Award, as part of the Radicondoli Prize for Theater, for the original use of new technologies and for the poetic richness of their work.

Maze develops on two levels, the visual one of the figure film and the performative one. The images are absolutely predominant, but the viewer's eye is also attracted by the performers who act on stage to create the sequences, cut in a cinematic way, which flow simultaneously on the large screen at the back. Their working tools are scattered in the foreground. A myriad of objects visible before the show begins and which, inevitably, stimulates a lot of curiosity in the attentive observer. There are many LED lights with blue or transparent jellies, trees, human figurines made of iron wire, a crown with many human profiles that stand out on the edge, a structure with a wooden base surmounted by iron grates, two rods with small pieces of hanging branches that deliberately refer to Alexander Calder.

Thanks to a wise use of light and shadow, the creative act is visible in its making, thus becoming an integral part of the work of art in itself. Thus, the wire figurines moved by the performers under the light sources used as cameras, simultaneously become the protagonists of the fragmentary story told on the screen. It is the spectator's task to fill in the gaps, interpret the images according to their feelings, trace relationships in the movements of the figures. It is a long subjective that associates images of life, from conception to first love and the adult life of an eternal child. The point of view is not only feminine, as you might think, but it is deeply human and affects us all.

The faces of a woman pass quickly, interiors of childhood rooms, swallows whizzing in the sky, a child that goes on a swing, a carousel that spins on itself and then, beautiful, the kites that fly high. Then an operating room evoked by faces protected by surgeon masks. Anonymous crowds in an alienating city and then the water, the sails, the seagulls with all their symbolic significance. Many other images, and in the end, just like at the beginning, the shadows of the twigs that suggest the conception of a new life.

The film is highly poetic and brings to mind the verses of Emily Dickinson, Wislawa Szymborsa, Mariangela Gualtieri and others. The sounds curated by Posho adhere to the images and enhance their dynamism which at times slows down to create pauses of magical suspension. The images refer to Modigliani, Steinberg and Maria Lai.

You can admire the technical expertise, the measure, the perfect coordination of all the elements of the show and the individual gestures of the performers and other operators. A meticulous work that leads to excellent results.

The audience is drawn into a whirlwind of visions that cannot be forgotten.

Kilowatt Festival: looking at Sansepolcro from the moon.

by Andrea Zangari, Scenecontemporanea, 13/08/2019

Gaze and light are also the subject of the investigation made by the Unterwasser group, which with MAZE explores the techniques of shadow theater with a narrative editing, without words, built by succession of visual archetypes. The stage of the Santa Chiara Auditorium appears filled with small and large wire devices, which the three performers backlight from time to time, projecting their filiform profile onto the backdrop. Figures with hollow outlines emerge, enriched from time to time by colored lights, screens streaked with water and other superimposed figures. MAZE is anti-narrative but also, paradoxically, anti-figurative: the images, which suggest scenarios of a female life from childhood, to adolescence, to maturity, lend themselves to accompanying the memories of each spectator. A park, a bedroom, a sky, a city, a beach. The statute of the image that the performance defines is of subtle philosophical value: we are shown the threshold of the appearance of signs. Not a banal and rhetorical evocation of the invisible, but a very thoughtful investigation into the minimum measure of making sense, of making a story: of making it, moreover, all together, projecting one's memory and desire onto the same backdrop. MAZE is in fact the labyrinth, an emblematic figure of the philosophical tradition, which speaks to us as a metaphor of the construction of meaning that everyone must operate. "The labyrinth [...] is never chaos, it has an order: it starts from many centers and allows each one to build not only the road but also the exit. The 'common' of these different paths is the open, that 'something' to which we tend without being able to define it, because truth is not a possession "(Massimo Cacciari, The philosophical labyrinth). In this sense, the stage space has no distinction with respect to the stalls: there is a real demolition of the fourth wall, for which the three artists live in front of the image, even if triggered by them, the same degree of separation that the public. It is exciting to see with how much gestural care Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio prepare the spell, and then escape the scene, turning the horizontal plane of the stage into an open-air workshop. "

MAZE, a small shadowy jewel

by Andrea Porcheddu, Gli Stati Generali, 03/06/19

This weekend, for example, we saw a real gem.

I'm talking about Maze, the latest creation of the all-female group Unterwasser, a team that already stood out for the very delicate and poetic Out, a show - as they say - for young and old that enjoyed great success.

Repeated success with Maze: the new production won second place at the InBox2019 Award and confirms, where needed, the creative talent of Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio.

Theirs is a shadow theater, projections of light on a large screen: there are no cameras or sophisticated technologies, on the contrary everything is extremely handcrafted, visible, immediate and very effective. Poor materials (wire, water, cardboard, wood…) that expertly treated and illuminated create and evoke worlds, sensations, feelings.

Maze is a story of candid simplicity: a story of life, from conception to meeting with the loved one - and perhaps to a new conception. But it is up to each individual spectator to complete the proposal, fill the spaces left free by the narration, open up to the suggestions evoked by the images.

The Unterwasser collective plays with the archetypes of the imagination, evoking situations, stories, encounters, disturbances, loneliness, dreams. We see what could be the protagonist grow up: the little girl's room, the rides, the little friend to play with, the restless adolescence, even a hospitalization, the desolate and desolate city.

But it is not the “plot” that counts, nor the dramaturgy in the strict sense, rather the scenic writing, that is the evocative capacity of this absolutely aware and mature puppetry.

Its poetic force, which unravels on a sound fabric made of everyday noises and suggestive music (the sound design is curated by “Posho”), grips the spectators: everyone can find traces of their own autobiography.

The three performer-animators, silent and precise, thus give life to a film of figures, shadows that slide on the backdrop in the "subjective" of the invisible protagonist, of which we can guess the blink of an eye, a hand, arms that stretch out to swim in a swim in the pool that becomes a magical crossing of fantastic underwater worlds. There are no limits to the imagination, the Unterwassers seem to say, nor to the possibility of dreaming.

And for me, who am now an elderly gentleman, those shadow games, that swing under the trees, with the swallows singing in the sky, trigger a fierce and moving nostalgia, for what it was, for those moments that no longer will come back. So I think of the many who live in SPinTime, of those children who come from who knows where and I see playing on the stairs of the building, full of life and dreams.

In-Box 2019 celebrates 10 years of circulation

by Mario Bianchi, Krapp’s Last Post  31/05/2019

(…) Of a completely different kind is "Maze" (labyrinth) by the female collective UnterWasser, a live performance in which Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio use the most disparate light sources on stage to create, on a large screen, the illusion of watching a film.

Here are born in a simple and profitable way long shots, details, tracking shots, subjective that are created thanks to the movement of lights, objects where even the bodies of the performers become significant.

There are no words to accompany the images, but an original soundtrack created by Posho. The viewer's eye perceives reality through another eye, mirror of another world on which the eyes of others act: a world that contains the lyrical fragments of a life that participates in the joys and sorrows of the human being. All in an exquisitely intellectual way, with poetic quotations inspired by Mariangela Gualtieri and Wisława Szymborska, and figurative ones that refer to Steinberg, Tresoldi, Modigliani, Maria Lai and especially Alexander Calder.

A refined show that intrigued us especially when the images leave the reinvention of reality to identify with a dream dimension.

MAZE, matter in movement.

by Francesco Bove, L’armadillo Furioso, 08/02/2020

The Unterwasser company, composed of Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio, staged Maze at the TAN in Naples, a live performance where the shadows of sculptures and three-dimensional bodies are projected live on a large screen.

Second place at the 2019 InBox Award, Maze is a completely handmade work that, without the use of words, explores the power of images and music, giving the viewer the opportunity to interpret and connect everything they are seeing.

There is, therefore, no real plot, but the physical place of the theater becomes stage writing that deeply distorts the perceptions that go through life. There is no real presence on stage, the three performers are always with their backs to the audience and in dim light, and the acting gesture goes beyond its limits, fermenting into something else. I am reminded of a letter from Cristina Campo to her friend Matizia at a point where the writer explains to her that the soapstone is a Chinese pebble that is underwater and is covered with a soft material like soap which, in contact with the air becomes hard as jade. For this reason it must be worked under water.

Here, "Maze" is an "unterwasser", "underwater" show, worked underwater because, in contact with the air, it could harden and lose all its poetry. The viewer, therefore, accompanies the three performers on this mental journey to touch the bottom of the sea, with the risk of "getting hurt with sharp corals" (and the risk is really around the corner).

A theater that is also a mobile installation, which exploits the technique of film editing to create a special, evocative narrative fabric that does not set linguistic limits.

We are enchanted by something simple and profound, a show full of poetry and suggestions, in some ways cruel, which creates unexpected bridges with our personal dream dimensions.