Futurism @ the IIC with Massimiliano Finazzer Flory

Why do we want to bring Futurism to the stage? Because it's part of our history. Because we are in love with the transcendent tomorrow. Because we believe in the wireless imagination.
 

 Massimiliano Finazzer Flory

Theatre is life. Life is movement. Movement is Futurism.   

A Great Futurist Evening depicts the life, the movement, the power and the habit of energy that the Futurists demanded from Italy, a country that had, perhaps, already lost the "love of danger and fearlessness".   

Massimiliano Finazzer Flory examines the power of affirmation, of fantasy, and of technological civilizations with words of freedom and imagination. He becomes the "athlete of the heart" taking on the role of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and his Futurist Manifestos.

Without Marinetti there would be no Futurism. Finazzer Flory also gives a voice to Giovanni Papini, one hundred years after the publication of his controversial and fledgling magazine Lacerba. Papini worked against a useless admiration of the past in favour of the young generation.   

An intense, incendiary performance, that touches the identity of man, at the heart of which voice and body come together to sing, "the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt".

"Futurism", explains Finazzer Flory in Italian daily Corriere della Sera (August 11, 2013), "celebrated life, of which man is the foremost masterpiece and energy the foremost work of art. But what energy do we see today?

We live in a time which unites us all politically in the name of transformation and conformity. And so, as Papini would say, opening the windows is no longer enough: we must have the courage to knock down a few doors. Better to disturb the peace than play the compliant chimpanzee".

Director and performer
Massimiliano Finazzer Flory

Music by Stravinsky, Casella, Cilea, Sakamoto
Costumes Sartoria Brancato Milano

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Tuesday, August 26
6PM
Italian Cultural Institute
686 Park Avenue
New York

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This is the  consecutive year that Finazzer Flory brings a show to the US. In 2011-2012 he came with I Promessi sposi  (The Betrothed), in 2013 he brought Pinocchio, storia di un burattino (Pinocchio, the story of a puppet), and now it's the time of Gran Serata Futurista. This play is about movement, energy, mechanical splendor, and unconstrained imagination. Finazzer Flory voices the Manifesti Futuristi  (Futurist Manifestos) of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, because with no Marinetti there will be no Futurism. And just in the style of the futurists, Finazzer Flory  “attacks” those who live in the past as they are “just like the sick or the prisoners who see the past as a healing balsam and the future as prison bars...”