Twelve hours: nine hours of show, three hours of break, lunch and dinner included, with 26 actors and 400 spectators together to create a theatre community involving the audience and artists from the very first hours of the day until late at night. The show is I Demoni by Peter Stein, set for June 19 and 20 at the former beer factory of Miano.
After only four repetitions held last year in director Stein’s personal mansion in San Pancrazio in Umbria, the show is already considered “an historic event”. In numbers, the show presents monumental features: 26 actors on stage, a 25.000 kilometer world tour that will stop by 12 theatre venues, arranged in 7 Italian and 5 international cities, for a total of 350 hours of show. Each repetition will consist of a 12 hour theatre-marathon that will bring to life the 900 page novel, a milestone in modern literature. After all, Peter Stein is considered a master of European theatre; he was cofounder and artistic director of the Schaubühne in Berlin from 1970 to 1985, and is no stranger to such an enterprise: in 1980 he staged a nine-hour long Orestes; in the year 2000, a Faust that lasted twenty two hours; and in 2007, Schiller’s Wallenstein in ten hours.
The true singularity of the event, however, goes far beyond. The show will in fact be staged in the evocative venue of the former beer factory of Miano, in the northern outskirts of Naples, where Napoli Teatro Festival Italia has built stalls capable of hosting over 400 spectators. This is how the Festival plans to inhabit the city, and thanks to Festival, which has collaborated in the production with Wallenstein Betriebs GmbH and Tieffe Teatro Milano Stabile di Innovazione, the show will continue in a world tour reaching cities such as Athens, New York and Paris.
