Cofounded by Antonio Murru and Donatella Pau in 1980, Is Mascareddas is a cultural presence that has strongly helped to spread the tradition of Puppet Theatre in Sardinia, till then unknown in the Mediterranean island. The basic idea supporting the company activity is that Puppet Theatre should be considered as important as Theatre played by actors. Since the beginning, the company played an important role in the diffusion of Puppet and Children Theatre, by planning and organizing programs, festivals and reviews with both Italian and International Companies.

Venti Contrari

A little puppet is hanging on a few lines. An elegant figure is inching along to take her hands. That’s the beginning of the lonely journey of two sisters in a miserable, brutish and dusty city landscape. The figures are the reproduction of the self-portrait puppets of Giuseppina and Albina Coroneo.

Together with Giuseppina and Albina other eight characters appear on the stage. They’re inspired by so many puppets that the two artists from Cagliari built from the end of the second world war until the seventies of the last century. Is Mascareddas Company relived them taking the cue from the monograph “Coroneo – The work of two artisan crafts sisters” by Vittorio Sgarbi and Marco Peri (Ilisso Edizioni) and from the homonym exhibition set up in Cagliari in 2009, when the volume was published. The puppets play with overwhelming realism the human condition after a catastrophe or a war. Among them a sweeper is trying in vain to erase his memories by sweeping the road, but it’s not easy to wipe away bad memories! In this shred of a war-torn city life is shattered in pieces hard to be dismantled: the memories are still there weighing like boulders.

They would like to get their own life back but, as usually happens, it’s always more difficult to build again what comes next. A prostitute waves a red handkerchief in the hope to approach a client: her body is too old, she can’t get someone’s attention anymore! A man shakes his hand, he would like to approach her but he’s a prisoner, he can’t do it anymore…. Although for all the characters the wind blows in the opposite direction, the strength of each of them is just as obstinate and opposite compared to the wind.

JUNHO 2019