Calendar

«Kader Abdolah’s story is that of a man of today, who lives in the Netherlands but was born in Iran. He qualified as a physicist, was a political refugee and writes in Dutch. In today’s world our experiences shatter, are in constant movement, migrate constantly. That is why it is increasingly hard to get to grips with actual life. The characters in Kader Abdolah’s novels, like all of us, strive to escape the state of constant imagining to which the instability and precariousness of our ever changing technological devices seem to condemn us. In Cuneiform script,  a defensive weapon comes from a long way: from the distant past, from an ancient form of writing.

Ismail, the book’s hero, finds one of his father’s notebooks, which is in fact written in cuneiform script. The father, Aga Akbar, was deaf and dumb and made carpets in the land of flying carpets. The notebook contains the thoughts of this man whom the son abandoned and whom, as is often the case, he did not understand. For Ismail, setting about translating this mysterious writing meant discovering solid roots that he thought he had lost forever. This means reliving History with a capital H through the father’s simple history:  the Shah’s supposed westernization, the return and the violence of the ayatollahs, the struggles for freedom … It is in the depth of tradition that we find, assuming that this is still possible, signs for understanding reality or even just the ability to be in a world that constantly takes us willy nilly somewhere else. In this book, Kader Abdolah follows the maxim of the musician Gustav Mahler that tradition means keeping the flame alive, not worshipping the ashes».

Gabriele Vacis

Gabriele Vacis
He is an author and director. He founded and directed the Laboratorio Teatro Settimo, and conceived festivals like Torino Spiritualità. He was a permanent director of the Teatro Stabile in Turin, head of the Teatro Regionale Alessandrino and of the Theatres of Reggio Emilia. He has directed and taught at the Paolo Grassi school in Milan and Turin’s Teatro Stabile school. He co-authored with Marco Paolini Il racconto del Vajont, which won three television Oscars. His film Uno scampolo di paradiso won the Jury Prize at the Annecy Festival. He teaches at Milan’s Università Cattolica. He is a partner in the social enterprise PoEM Potenziali Evocati Multimediali.

Lorenzo Tombesi
Lorenzo Tombesi graduated from the acting school of Turin’s Teatro Stabile. He and his classmates set up PoEM Potenziali Evocati Multimediali. He acted in Antico Testamento directed by Gabriele Vacis and also took care of the staging. The other plays were: Sette a Tebe, Antigone e i suoi fratelli, Prometeo, Risveglio di primavera, which were also directed by Vacis. I wonder if this may be held was performed at the Theatre and The Place in London. He has run theatre workshops in schools and prisons.

Roberto Tarasco
He is a musical expert, director, light designer and set designer and has provided the sound for Eugenio Allegri, Natalino Balasso, Alessandro Baricco, Lella Costa, Laura Curino, Alessandro D’Avenia, Arnoldo Foà, Valeria Moriconi, Marco Paolini and others. He was the founder and organizational director of Laboratorio Teatro Settimo theatre workshop (1982-2002). Since 2002 he has periodically staged shows for Turin’s Teatro Stabile. He promoted and directed theatre performances, operas, seasons, projects, festivals, docufilms, radio and television broadcasts, ceremonies and major events.
He always helps stage Gabriele Vacis’ works and events. He is currently working on the development of the youth theatre group Compagnia PoEM Potenziali Evocati Multimediali.