Tumor's Pall of Infancy - English Press Release

CeSDAS is proud to present:

Tumor Foderato d’Infanzia
(Tumor’s Pall of Infancy)

A Scenodrama by Andrea Cusumano

July 1st 9:00pm, July 2nd 9:00pm 2006
Teatro Garibaldi
Via Castrofilippo 30
Piazza Magione - Palermo Italy

Contact: Nathalie Harb +39 (335) 811-4682 nnaiiade@hotmail.com


Centro di Sperimentazione per la Drammaturgia Applicata allo Spazio (CeSDAS) in conjunction with Teatro Garibaldi, Palermo - Unione Teatri d’Europa and MA Scenography - Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London proudly present Tumor’s Pall of Infancy. Inspired by Dead Class a 20th Century masterpiece by Tadeusz Kantor.

Starring Mira Rychlicka, returning to the stage for the first time since the the end of Kantor’s career. Mira will resurrect her role as Tumor, which she performed for almost 20 years under Kantor’s direction.

Directed by Andrea Cusumano, a painter like Kantor, who has been researching and redeveloping the late director’s methodology into this new production.

Produced and Performed By

Alexa Reid........................Roberto Sánchez-Camus
Ada Nisticò.................................Costanza Minafra
Nino Faranna...................................Mira Rychlicka
Nino Russo.......................................Shahin Firouzi
Vincenzo Schillaci..............................Roberta Vario
Nike......................................................Vanja Iseler
Milena Blunda...................................Chiara Marasa’
Fiammetta Oliver.................................Giulia Oliver
Masiar Firouzi..................................Gaetano Costa
Marco Crescimanno....................Andrea Cusumano
Mela Dell’Erba......................................Natalie Harb
Davide Mezzatesta..........................Linda Randazzo
Giulia Ravazzolo.....................................Gli Studenti

Dramaturgy
After a long absence, Tumor returns to the theatre and to his school desk. He finds himself within a class of young school children, inspired by Bruno Schultz’ short story ‘The Pensionist’ and Witold Gombrowicz’s ‘Ferdydurke’. As Tumor seeks to find his lost class through them, he realizes he is in a dream born from his own memory. The hallucinations unfold summoning a host of lost characters.

Mira Rychlicka was one of the main actors in Tadeusz Kantor’s company Cricot2. She worked with Kantor since his first performances and delivered the seminal role of Tumor in ‘The Dead Class’. She also performed leading roles within ‘Wielopole Wielopole’, ‘Let the Artist Die’, ‘I shall never return’ and ‘Today is My Birthday’. Avoiding the stage since the end of Kantor’s career, she has after 15 years found again a source of inspiration. Her resurrection as Tumor in this production is an extraordinary event of historical importance.

Andrea Cusumano was born in Palermo, Italy in 1973. A painter, sculpture and director, Cusumano has worked on a variety of exhibitions and performances in Italy and abroad (New York, Los Angeles, Vienna, Salisburg, Berlin, London, Valencia, Rome, Naples, Palermo, Modena). He has also worked as the assistant of a variety of notable artists including Jacobo Borges (Caracas), Jeff Hendricks (New York) and Hermann Nitsch (Vienna).

For Nitsch in particular he has taught at the Somerakademie of Salzburg and has produced and directed important performances (the-6-day-play/1998 and the-2-day-play/2001); he also is the current conductor of the Orchestra of the O.M.Theatre (performed in Bonn/Kunst Und Austellungshalle der Bundes Republick, Berlin/National Galleries in Hamburgerbahnof and Vienna/Burgtheater). Currently he lives and works in London teaching Dramaturgy of Space at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

He has been researching Kantor’s methodology for the last 3 years in the Center of Documentation for the Art of Tadeusz Kantor of Cracovia. The collaboration with Mira Rychlicka started in the Krzsysztofory Gallery, the original location of Kantor’s ‘Dead Class’. There they developed the piece ‘Drabina Jakuba' inspired by Bruno Schulz’s ‘The Cinnamon Shops’. This original production has been invited by the Polish Embassy of London to be peformed in London in 2007 as part of a Kantor retrospective.