A story of basic and perverse family dynamics, the play is an all-female human comedy in three acts. The Mother Daria lives with her Daughter Federica among bulky modern appliances, godlike monumental figures; they confront reality as they eat, chat, and get dressed. Sometimes other characters in the family constellation, such as the Analyst, join them. The womb of domestic life is staged in chapters, which lead not towards an ending but towards an origin. The play portrays the indifference, rage, and helplessness of those who live with depression.
About the Author: The career of Lucia Calamaro, playwright, director, and actress, has taken her to three continents: Uruguay, France, and lastly Italy. Born in Rome, she moved to Montevideo with her diplomat father when she was thirteen years old. She earned a degree in Art and Aesthetics from the Sorbonne, Paris. Besides teaching at the Catholic University of Uruguay in Montevideo, she took part as an actress and director in many productions there, as well as in Paris, and then above all in Rome, where she began collaborating with the independent organization Rialto Sant'Ambrogio.
In 2003, she founded the Malebolge company and it was through this group that she was able to stage her own plays and her adaptations of classics. In 2003 she adapted and directed Medea, tracce, di Euripide (Medea, footprints, by Euripides) and Woyzeck, an adaptation of Georg Büchner's 1836-37 unfinished play. The following year she began staging her own plays: Guerra (War, 2004); Cattivi maestri (Bad teachers, 2005); Tumore, uno spettacolo desolato (Tumor, a bleak vision, 2006); Magick, autobiografia della vergogna (Magick, autobiography of shame, 2008); the latter was produced at Teatro India as part of the project Young Talents of the Teatro di Roma.
Between 2011 and spring 2017, Calamaro steadily wrote and directed her own plays, as follows: L'origine del mondo, ritratto di un interno (Origin of the World, Interior Conversation Piece, 2011), which garnered three UBU prizes among which was best new Italian play of the 2011-12 season; Diario del tempo, l'epopea quotidiana (Journal of passing time, an epic of the everyday,
2014) premiered at Teatro India, Rome, in a co-production of the regional theatre of Umbria, Teatro di Roma, and Teatro Franco Parenti. La vita ferma: sguardi sul dolore del ricordo, (Life at a standstill: looking at the sadness of memory, 2016) is her latest creation. The play premiered in September 2016 at Festival di Termi as a coproduction of the regional theatres of Sardinia and
Umbria; Angelo Mai Occupato, Rome; the Odeon National Theatre, Paris; and Teatro di Roma.
In 2012 the independent Italian publishing house Editoria e Spettacolo collected three of her plays in Il ritorno della madre (The return of the mother), edited by Renato Palazzi: Tumore, uno spettacolo desolato; Magick, autobiografia della vergogna; and L'Origine del mondo, ritratto di un interno.Her plays were published in French translation in 2017 by the prestigious publishing firm Actes Sud; they are forthcoming in Spanish translation. Besides her numberous UBU awards, she won the Franco Enriquez Prize for directing and playwriting in 2012. Since 2014, she has taught playwriting at Scuola Civica Paolo Grassi, Milan.
