Green Days is the story of two generations coming face to face. It is the story of Marco and Emma, father and daughter, a Millennial and a Gen Z. She, often more of a parent than a daughter, is busy like all young people with school, work, her smartphone and a life full of passions and friendships. One of these passions is environmentalism.
He leads a precarious life, until one day he receives a job offer that could change their lives: a permanent post as a security guard at a natural gas distribution company.
Emma asks her dad not to take the job, because it would go against everything she believes in. Marco finds himself at a crossroads, but ultimately accepts the job.
From that point on, everything changes. Emma changes. What appears to be the start of a teenage rebellion is, in truth, the beginning of a form of activism that, day by day, becomes increasingly radical. The ideological conflict between an environmentalist and a realist turns into a conflict between daughter and father, between things left unsaid, feelings never expressed, and ‘I love you’s’ never spoken.

Director’s notes

These days, talking about the environment, climate change, sustainability and ‘green’ issues in general seems to have become both the easiest and the most difficult thing to do. Although these are topics that have only recently garnered renewed public attention, they already seem to us to be ‘over-discussed’, hard to take in. The risks are many, especially if one wishes to bring these themes to the theatre, a place where any artistic endeavour in this regard treads a fine line between the programmatic and the rhetorical.
Very well. Yet these are extremely important themes.
One might say they are ‘the Themes’ upon which the cornerstones of our civilisation rest: our place in the world, or rather, our space in the world. And so we have decided to take the risk.
In the relationship between father and daughter, truth and false consciousness are almost indistinguishable.
Emma’s activism is her reason for living and, at the same time, the justification and refuge for a teenager’s anxieties and fears.
Her father, Marco, devoted much of his youth to raising Emma: what better excuse than a daughter arriving early to avoid facing the challenges, responsibilities and duties of adult life?
How the world we inhabit reacts to our life choices will shape our future, that of our children and of future generations. It is impossible to remain on the sidelines; it is impossible not to take a stand. However, what if, beneath these stances, we are hiding our egoistic need to save ourselves from the pettiness and limitations of our society? Emma and Marco will discover that ours is a complex society, which, as soon as they try to grapple with it – just as we do, without realising it, every day – will cause them to stumble over their own contradictions.

Mattia Fabris