DIOGGENE
What do a 13th-century Tuscan farmer recovering from a fierce battle, an actor at the height of his success who has just been abandoned by his wife, a man who has given up everything to live in a garbage can have in common? Simple, they are the same person. To be precise, Nemesio Rea.
This is the paradox from which the show "Dioggene" starts. A monologue spanning the ages written by Giacomo Battiato specifically for the actor Stefano Fresi. Alone on stage, Fresi takes on the role of three different characters to recompose the puzzle of a single life, to tell the story of a man in all his absurd contradictions, pettiness, but also flashes of genius and enlightenment.
from GBOPERA
Stefano Fresi’s latest show, “Dioggene,” written and directed by Giacomo Battiato, represents one of the most daring recent explorations of the potential of contemporary theatre to unravel the paradoxes of human existence. (….)
In “Dioggene”, the synergy between directorial vision, symbolic scenography and titanic interpretation translates into a work capable of questioning the spectator on the meaning of existence, without offering definitive answers but welcoming the beauty of doubt.
Fresi, at center stage, stands as a living monument of a theatre that dares, reflects and moves, restoring to the word, gesture and presence their highest and most universal value. There are many ways to tell the truth: sometimes it is whispered, other times it is shouted. The latter is perhaps the most daring choice. Here, theatrical truth manages to be vehement and visceral without ever losing authenticity, and the audience responds with equal force and spontaneity, finding in the gestures and words on stage a reflection of their own emotions. At the end, a long and heartfelt applause consecrated the success of the show, making evident not only the aesthetic appreciation it garnered, but also the emotional and intellectual participation of the audience. The spectators and the performer united in an experience that transcended the boundaries of the theatre to become a reflection of a real shared experience.
from LA PRESSE
Battiato: a show that, despite covering violence, anger, anxiety and pain, I consider to be a call to beauty you can find in the world.
from
IL MESSAGGERO
“Stefano Fresi, Oddi, Nemesio Rea, Dioggene and I, Giacomo Battiato, are the same person” - said the director. “ Staging this triple monologue that I wrote for Stefano is pure joy”.
from IL SOLE 24 ORE
Stefano Fresi is a showman in Giacomo Battiato’s ‘Dioggene’.
from LA PLATEA
Battiato has chosen the theatre as his stage, has borrowed the body and voice of Stefano Fresi, and has drawn from the story of Diogenes. He shouts freely, having reached a wise age, all that he desires, and does so without being thought a madman. He awakens numbed souls, scolds the audience sitting in the theatre, and retells all of the deformities of life alongside all of its redeeming beauties: the need to once again love, and to find a sense of beauty, of truth, and of justice (...) Battiato highlights how every historical period ultimately repeats itself and the themes, recurring and always the same, inevitably take on a sadly current character: human stupidity and violence, declined in all its forms, from parent-child conflict, to gender violence, to the painful and heartbreaking brutality of war (...) Giacomo Battiato, Stefano Fresi, and the characters that come to life on stage are ultimately one person; just as they are one with each of the people sitting in the theatre seats watching the show.
from LA REPUBBLICA
“Cultivating passions is Dioggene’s weapon against stupidity (…) It’s a wonderful text, an honour to stage it, and a gift to taste the lives of others” says Fresi.
from L'ANSA
Fresi-Battiato: in Dioggene our need for beauty.
~
A new love has blossomed between Battiato and the stage.
from TG2
DIOGGENE Giacomo Battiato's new show on stage at the Teatro Ambra Jovinelli in Rome, tells the story of Nemesio Rea, an actor of humble origins played by Stefano Fresi. A work that explores violence, beauty and the essence of being human.
from TRENTINOLIBERO
Giacomo Battiato and Stefano Fresi: a call to beauty in the chaos of everyday life.
from MARCHE SPETTACOLO
Standing ovation and new sold-out at the Politeama for Stefano Fresi in Giacomo Battiato’s “Dioggene” .
