What happens when the enemy you fear knocks at your door? Elisabetta Pozzi stars in this powerful play by Dorfman alongside Gigio Alberti and Giuseppe Sartori. A powerful theatrical allegory about borders, which exposes the absurdity of fearing the other and of the walls that divide us.

Director’s notes

In a modest house nestled amongst the mountains, an elderly couple survive by identifying and burying soldiers, anonymous victims of an ongoing war. The sudden announcement of the war’s end is the event that alters the rhythm and routines of the two characters, in a crescendo of situations that spiral into the absurd and even the ridiculous. But it is the arrival of a third character and the border they bring with them that changes everything: from that moment on, the dividing line will run through the house, the bed, and the couple. Ariel Dorfman is an author born in Argentina, of Jewish origin, but who has spent his life elsewhere. I, of Istrian and Lebanese origins and born in Argentina, share with Dorfman alove for ambiguity and the complexity of the perspective that distances us from the reality presented to us by the media – a reality so oversimplified that we feel the need to distance ourselves from it, fearful and reduced to the state of children, protected by a state-sanctioned narrative. With The other side we will embark on a journey towards the archetype, towards theaction that defines a horizon, towards a comic tragedy – an oxymoron that will evoke the wicked games of war, and speak of survival and boundaries, both real and metaphysical. An allegory of the wall that separates the good from the bad, the husband from the wife, a child from its parents, the past from the present, lies from the truth. Grotesque and paradoxical, the play will take us on a journey through our deepest fears in a domestic yet enigmatic and mysterious setting: a house split in two, and at the same time a daily existence immersed in the din of war. The characters in The Other Side live in a house in a war zone, yet this location is not specified by the author. Indeed, those who immerse themselves in this story will be able to name this place; they will be able to name the things, the facts, the events. They will be able to interpret and perhaps recognise the ambiguity that The Other Side presents to the audience.

Marcela Serli