Il cielo non è un fondale

Antonio explains that he has dreamed of Daria, and that he pretended not to know her in the dream. This gesture is beginning of a rhythm of contradictory feelings between non-recognition and encounter. A show between the real space of dreams and the reverie created by the theatre of the Italian company Deflorian/Tagliarini, which has been acclaimed in various cities in Europe.


With its premiere in 2016 at the Théâtre de Vidy-Lausanne (Switzerland), Il cielo non é un fondale (The Sky is not a Backdrop) is the eighth stage project shared by Daria Deflorian and Antonio Tagliarini, both writers, directors and performers, who have created a series of joint works since 2008. Since the outset, they have been pieces that permanently explore different representation techniques and alternatives in the relationship between viewer and creation.

Never more pertinent than in this work, in which a nearly philosophical dialogue is established between what we are inside and what we are outside, between the fictitious space of the stage and the real outside space. ‘To us, this is an increasingly more necessary dialogue, as sometimes it is hard for us to breathe real air again after a while shut inside rehearsing, with all the improvisations and trainings, aware that life is somewhere else. We are going to try to demolish these walls, all of them, not only the well known fourth wall.’

To do so, they only need four actors, a song, a dream and words, lots of words, the fundamental and also the essential ones, those that like extra kilos make us into obese individuals. All of the cards are on the table and, then, they will all be distilled down to obtain just their essence, if this is even possible. Dreams leave us alone, says Didi-Huberman, alone facing a plotless story, with no beginning and no end. And that is, little more or less, this dramatic act that puts the background into the foreground in the relationship between subject and context, between us and the world. ‘How can we not ask ourselves today—ponder Daria and Antonio—about the migratory flows of dozens of thousands of people who are leaving everything they had to escape from an unthinkable situation, war, misery?’.