G.A.S.

Directing: Compagnia del Buco

Dramaturgy:

Actors: Luca Macca e Simone Vaccari

Other credits: scenography: Roberto Macca
costumes: Luca Macca e Simone Vaccari
advisors: Andrea Menozzi e Christel Dicembre
photography: Letizia Violi

Key words: clown, circo, gas, campeggio

Production: Mittelfest

Year of production: 2021

Theatrical genre: Children's theatre (3-99)

SYNOPSIS

In a summer day like any other in a little campsite, two strange people wander around.

A tank and a burner, two cases and a tarp, all you need to turn the day of the other campers upside-down with absurd and comical actions.

Between the floor’s slope, the forgotten objects, the strange constructions, and the experiments with the Gas, will the two clowns be able to make a warm cup of tea without causing an explosion?



RESEARCH PATH

The idea for this show comes from a true experience that took place during a vacation in a campsite, during which a tragedy almost occurred due to a leak of gas from a burner.

Upon returning from the vacation, we began the period of research, determined to use those same objects damaged by the small fire, which carried an emotional meaning. From the start, it was clear to us the intention not to use traditional circus props and to reduce the acrobatic stunts and the scenography to a minimum, in order to work with few and simple things.

The reduction of each of these parameters challenged us to look deeper into the figure of the clown, the use of voice, and the manipulation of non-day-to-day objects.

The dilation of time in no time, the loss of it in jokes and nonsense, the clownesque and tragi-comical approach to the situations, led us to find the theme of the show: preparing a simple cup of tea while camping.

From here, the incapability of heating up the water, due to the lack of the actual gas, led to the need of involving the audience in a continuous improvisation, in order to escape this mess of a situation, and finally reach our objective. The show was presented as a “work in progress” in August of 2020, then after various suggestions and feedback from Compagnia Circolabile, officially debuted in its final version in July of 2021 in Reggio Emilia.