Castrovillari, “Spring of Theaters” out of season

by Claudio Facchinelli, Rumor(s)cena , 25/10/22

 

[…] In this panorama of good professionalism, but without peaks, of really exciting proposals, at least three works, totally different from each other, stand out for their originality.

Untold by Unterwasser is an enjoyable example of puppetry, without words (as if to demonstrate its unnecessary as a communication tool): a delicate, poetic score of lights and shadows generated by manipulating and illuminating objects with a fragile and precarious aspect , even filiform, but also the moving profiles of the faces and bodies of Valeria, Aurora and Giulia which, on sight, give a soul to those objects, thanks to a well-established professionalism, reminiscent of the poetics of the late Georgian master Rezo Gabriadze , unsurpassed creator of intangible magic. [...]

UNTOLD

by Tiziana Bonsignore, Teatro e Critica, 30/09/22

 

Three transparent blocks, three women crouched inside them. It’s dark in the hall. The light goes on again: a jumble of threads materializes inside the blocks. Thus begins Untold by the UNTERWASSER collective (Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti, Giulia De Canio), seen at the Spazio Franco during the Mercurio Festival. The three interpreters animate a dream machine, a cinematograph of silhouettes with which they paint the anxieties and solitudes of contemporary life. The torch, which they use to project the shadows on the screen, becomes a camera in their hands: the episodes follow one another in fading, between music and everyday noises produced directly on the scene. Close-ups, subjective shots and panoramic shots investigate the solitary life of some domestic interiors, but also metropolitan landscapes teeming with crowds and chaos. Before the eyes of the observers, the frames of a delicate and melancholy story unfold, whose lyricism is in the imaginative metamorphosis of shapes and sounds. A moment of delicate poetry, in which the audience is captivated by an almost childish amazement. But we are not talking about mere entertainment: wonder is here a source of reflection. Beyond the remarkable technical expedients, Untold describes that well-known urban reality in which the individual can easily get lost; however, beyond the crawl space of busy streets, the miracle of meeting is always possible.

Mercurio Festivas fourth edition: this is a present for you – II part

di Rita Cirrincione, Paneacquaculture.net, 9/10/22

 

[...] Untold by UnterWasser Company, is a reinterpretation, better an evolution, of the shadow theater both for the technical aspect and for the introspective content. In fact, Untold is not just puppetry, that artifice designed to create an illusory reality and amaze the public, but a language, a code to be deciphered and from which the unspoken can emerge, bringing to light the repressed that is hidden there. in a vision that seems to take up the Jungian concept of shadow.

Even the unveiling of the mechanism, laid bare under the eyes of the public with the "visible" projection of bodies and objects, is consistent with the project of the three artists who recklessly create a dramaturgy with a very high degree of complexity, managing to extricate themselves with skill and lightness among countless models, figures and scenic elements introduced during the show and the multiple situations and ways of being on stage - projecting and projecting oneself onto the cloth, being inside and outside the scene, observing and observing each other, and making now the their bodies, now shapes or objects.

 

[...] The same Italian company performed the following day, Saturday 6 November, with its latest show entitled Untold (the unspoken), a work commissioned by the Biennale Teatro di Venezia 2020.

The work, which could well be considered as the continuation of the investigation carried out with Maze, takes a gigantic step forward in changing the perspective from which the research is focused: instead of the distant and objective gaze of the eye - the moving light - of the observer who looks from the outside, in Untold Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio put themselves inside this eye that looks, that is, inside themselves as observers of themselves, so that subjectivity, which previously appeared objectified as a shadow in the distance on the screen, is now at the origin of the action of looking. A substantial change of perspective that determines the entire intersectional process of shadows and plays of light, giving depth to images that did not exist before.

First of all, instead of a single screen, the projection space is triple, three large adjacent screens located at open angles, which correspond to the three manipulators-protagonists, each of which will seek its own subjective singularity. Similarly, the beginning of the work starts from three cubes of light in which each of the artists is located, indicating a clear starting point: their isolation in relation to others and to the world. Inside the cube there is only the introspection of the gaze on oneself, this anxiety of contemporary narcissism that pours us into the current culture of the mediated digital image represented by mobile phones, social networks, selfies, etc. The introspective self-contemplation that has always been the starting point for the adventures of people's lives.

The girls-artists, of course, decide to get out of the cube and start their exploration. We return to the three silent figures which in this case are two things: the distant manipulators who know that the secret of things lies in the intersectional alchemy of shadows, and the protagonists of the research. That is to say, they will create impossible perspectives of streets, cities, structures, but they themselves will enter and appear as shadows in the crossed projections of the three screens. It is this ambiguity between distance and the anxiety of personal research, between distance and subjective intimacy, which gives impetus and rhythm to the dance of images and their evolution. It loads the action with a subtle and cognitive dramatism, in which the cold, distant and intelligent, but at the same time subjective, gaze is inserted.

A passing train, of which we only see the rhythmic visual interruption of the light it causes as it passes, is one of the recurring images, perhaps a metaphor for fast living, of the obligation we have today to go from one side to the other, at great speed but without knowing too much where we are going. And so the work proceeds towards an outcome that can be said to be the result of 'geography' or of the curvature of space itself: the three protagonists are in the compartment of a wagon of these trains that previously passed fleetingly. But the self-observation of knowing that they are also the eye with which they look at each other provokes a liberating revelation: by removing the artifact that simulates the window of the wagon, the train disappears. The contracted space frees itself from walls and boundaries, and the three girls, taking each other by the hand, break the isolation of their solitary introspection.

The magnificent finale of the work gives it a resolute sense and a beautiful dramaturgical coherence, which was worked out throughout the performance, always through this obsession with the intersection and overlapping of images, seeking the creative alchemy of transformation.

The merit and relevance of UnterWasser's work is that of having created works that deal with themes of radical contemporaneity on essential issues: identity, self-observation, distance, splitting, rupture of space, loneliness of urban life, relationship inside and outside, object / subject, reality / negativity, light / darkness ... - without the need for words (those used in the drama have a sense of cacophony of the inner voice rather than of meaningful speech), without theorizing and from the humility of the simple craftsman who plays with sticks, wires and lights purchased from Ikea.

A real privilege that the spectators present at the Teatro Sagarra in Santa Coloma de Gramenet were able to enjoy in two memorable sessions.

Chapeau!

SANSEPOLCRO, IL GIARDINO CONTESO E TUTTO IL TEATRO DI KILOWATT

by Walter Porcedda, Gli Stati Generali, August 2 2021

 

[…] The final gem is “Untold” which is neither dance nor theater in traditional terms, but puppetry. Fascinating puppetry by UnterWasser, a female company made up of three formidable actors: Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio who show how high-level theater can be done with shadows. Shadows that projected on sheets, give depth to a show built with other elements. Metallic threads that participate in complicated and intertwined constructions in space where their borders and projections themselves become shadows. Small, infinitely small, infinitely large. Little men climbing wire mazes, big men and women emerging from the dark like fleeting shadows. There is no emptiness, there is no fullness, but everything slips before the eyes like a magic lantern lit in the darkness of the night, and a sky of stars as a roof. Fugitive glances add up trains that run, house interiors, chairs that fly, suburban buildings that pass quickly, silhouettes that float in a lunar hyperspace etc… visions that leave a fleeting mark, apparitions from the world of dreams. Something that cannot be said. Which has not been said. Untold, in fact.

 

Untold, the first show to have the honor of opening the Visionary Selection 2021, speaks a hybrid, synecdotic language, which comes to us from the depths of a formal research born in 2014 by the multifaceted Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio of the group UnterWasser. Debuted in 2020 at the Biennale Teatro di Venezia, the performance halfway between puppetry and visual arts challenges classical categorizations and tries, succeeding, to give life to a "visual, universal, silent" language. "Under the water is the seabed, with its hidden wonders that create amazement. [...] Underwater the voice has no language, words become sound and meanings are grasped with the eyes. [...] Underwater is the dream, the world of the symbol, the myth, the utopia. To tap into it, you need to break the mirror on the surface and immerse yourself ». The images caught by this sea of ​​suggestions find in Untold a fruitful home where they can articulate themselves with eloquence, searching for what is hidden in the "unspoken", in that thin liminal space between "censorship and individual self-censorship", between non-power and not wanting to communicate, bring to light.

Through the masterful manipulation of the luminous medium, in fact, the UnterWasser artisans put "in the shade" what is not put "at word", grafting dreams into the public's imagination thanks to the mixture of fragments of wire and human flesh that it breaks through the limits of conventional shadow play, overlapping tangible and shared unrealities in an ever more pressing vortex made up of loves and dislikes, dependencies and independence. The three souls on the stage of the Dante Theater are capable, at the same time, of evoking disarming sweetness and merciless rawness, returning to the public a mature and honest show that lays bare the scenic artifices only to dramatically increase the narrative illusion, thus transporting us under that patina of silence where the most deafening words live.

 

Three shadows. Three abysses within which each individuality reveals its own intimate self-censorship. Those of UNTOLD are stories told by analog frames. The independent collective UnterWasser, with its typical visual and sound language, leads us on personal inner journeys in search of the self-defense mechanisms that inhibit action. We catch a glimpse of the three performers in the darkness of the scene as they build the sequences of the story, moving inside the space to the rhythm of Posho's suggestive universe of sound. The lamps are video cameras; the scenes and characters, on the other hand, are handcrafted miniatures which, by means of a play of light and shadows, come to life in a flowing of images, changes of perspective, subjective and wide angles. The feeling is to find ourselves in front of a short film in Hitchcock’s style. We enter the private space of their rooms: the shots become more and more detailed until they penetrate the maze of the unconscious, where the three figures collide with unspeakable blocks, fears and secrets. It will be a train ride and the meeting with other people that will give them a liberating laugh. With an original language that touches the enchantment of the fairy tale, UnterWasser tells a common path of liberation from cumbersome and censorious mental constructions, which lead to a risky closure in oneself and to nihilism. Monsters that - as they seem to tell us - reveal themselves to be more docile when faced together.

 

A show in which what is implied and not openly stated counts more than what is revealed: about how the unspoken (Untold) is decisive in shaping our lives.

Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio, founders and animators of the group of theatrical research UnterWasser, founded in Rome in 2014 and dedicated in particular to visual theater and its possible contamination with contemporary art.

Shadow theater techniques and “topoi” are originally exploited by the three artists, who act on the stage in front of the white screen and not behind it, in order not to hide anything and indeed explicitly declaring both the artificiality and the craftsmanship of the mise en scene.

Stylized interiors and train journeys, walks and restless cats, almost labyrinthine spaces and puppets in precarious balance: the visions created on stage are sketches of dreams, the result of an excited and vibrant half-sleep that briefly reveals unexpressed desires and suffocated fears.

UnterWasser trio brings on stage a restless repression, that reveals a desire for escape and fullness which is not completely fulfilled, This finds intense expression in the particular declination of the language of shadow theater coined by the artists.

 

…Thus, in emerging from the shadow, Untold shows what the shadow hides, or rather, what can emerge from the light. Not a story, but rather a condition, a feminine story, a dialogue between shapes, silhouettes and bodies, a design of places and rooms that are projected onto feeble screens. As the shadows teach, body and objects are combined, they marry into a whole that is other. Thus Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti, Giulia De Canio are one with the shapes that move: a girl in the tub, a girl at the table and another busy in the kitchen. In all this, the bodies of the actresses become shadowed and the silhouettes acquire an autonomous spatiality. Everything happens there, everything is permanent, what remains imprinted is perhaps more the action on the form than what is said with shadows, in a tension that reveals the potential of a language that, as the director of Biennale, Antonio Latella, affirms: "could also say a lot to institutional theater".

Avanti

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