Cenci - Contemporary Renaissance

The Cenci is a verse tragedy by Percy Bysshe Shelley, written during a stay in Italy in the summer of 1819. The work, set in Rome in 1599, dramatizes a manuscript found by the author in the archives of the Palazzo Cenci in Rome. It records the terrible events that led to the extinction of one of the city’s most noble families during the pontificate of Pope Clement VIII. In 1935 Antonin Artaud took up the story and extracted from it a ferocious drama, a manifesto of his “theatre of cruelty.” The story tells of Beatrice Cenci, a modern heroine capable of courage and determination, who endures throughout her short life the abuses and violence of a tyrannical and immoral father. To obtain freedom from the abusive father she has him killed, but she and her accomplices are discovered and publicly executed, although the Roman people were openly on her side. Victim first of abuses, then of justice. Dates: - Saturday 6 March at 20:30 - Sunday 7 March at 16:30