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The Bitter Belief of Cotrone the Magician

This is a devised performance inspired by the work of Polish director Tadeusz Kantor on one hand and Luigi Pirandello’s The Giants of the Mountain on the other.

The project is central to Cusumano’s research into compositional strategies for non-narrative based performance; it builds on his study of Kantor’s devising methodology, especially the concept of the dramaturgical potential of scenographic practice as a ‘theatrical reality’.

Pirandello’s unfinished play explores indeterminacies of dream and reality, themes that resonate very particularly with Kantor’s ambition. The intention of BBCM is to combine them, underpinning this combination with an enquiry into the relation of space to text, arising out of earlier investigations with Mira Rychlicka and CRICOT2. Research material was collected from archival documents and published sources (‘Cricoteka’ Krakow, DEA Foundation Edinburgh, CRT Milano, Museo della Marionette Palermo); direct interviews; and practical workshops with Crictot 2 (Mira Rychlicka), Cricoteka, Central Saint Martins, the Adam Mikiewicz Institute Warsaw, Polish Cultural Institute London, Rose Bruford College and the University of Washington.

This research led BBCM to apply a new methodology: the translation of a dramatic text into a geometrical equation for use as a dramaturgical driver. The process consists in individuating the spaces necessary to represent the story; sketching the functional interactions between the spaces: and drafting a geometrical translation of space function which synthesises possible dramaturgical movement. This drawing becomes the main dramaturgical driver during the devising process: narrative elements change, but the interaction between the events 'in space' remains unvaried.

Pirandello’s first line is: ‘Time and site, undetermined: the cross border between fairytale and reality.’ BBCM experiments with text-object relations in spaces particularly selected as being otherworldly in aspect. Presented as part of international festivals (Gibellina; Edinburgh; Delhi; Graz; Kerala) these locations each informed the actual shape of the piece towards a ‘nomadic-site-specific’ performance.