Play, "Romeo and Juliet" (2009), film, "I.N.R.I." (2004) and Conference moderated by Prof. Riccardo Viale, Director of Italian Cultural Institute, NYC December 22, 2011

"Romeo and Juliet" (2009) is a distillation of Shakespeare's classic that contrasts the marvel of love with the fragility of life, the shock of the moment of total loss, and what D'Ambrosi calls the "schizophrenia of the world." The beautiful sensuality and emotion of love is compressed into a magic moment. "It's like the magic moment when somebody shoots you," he says. "There is no emotion like that moment." The action is primarily physical but where there is dialogue, it is in English. To say more is be to give away this radical, Artaudian, innovative production's dramatic surprises. (Runs 10 minutes)



"I.N.R.I." (2005) is D'Ambrosi's film adaptation of his play, "The Pathological Passion of the Christ" (2004), which was his first time that D'Ambrosi directed a play with an American cast. That year, D'Ambrosi was seen worldwide as the Roman Soldier who mercilessly whipped Jesus in "The Passion of the Christ." He realized that many in Jesus' own time considered him insane, and that some historians have speculated that he may have been epileptic. The play compared the sacrifice of Jesus, metaphorically, to the forcible lobotomies of epileptics, an ordeal that was once widespread in Italy. To Jesus' story were added the experiences of patients D'Ambrosi had known in Italian mental institutions.



Both the play and film are Pirandellian in style. Jesus and six other characters take stage in a theater where he is struggling to put on The Last Supper as a play. A series of confrontations ensue in which the play is obstructed; both Christ and the playwright, D'Ambrosi, are critiqued and confronted by the other characters. These include the Apostle Peter, Satan (represented by the theater's cleaning lady), Caiaphus (the Jewish High Priest in the Gospels, here a middlebrow and a scold), Pilate (a hoodlum who has been gelded in jail), Judas (a sexual compulsive) and Mary (portrayed as a universal mother of the handicapped). (Runs 1:30)



The evening will end with a Conference moderated by Prof. Riccardo Viale, Director of Italian Cultural Institute of New York.

Official Website: http://www.lamama.org