Sharazade

The story of Sharazade, heroine of The Thousand and One Nights, is a fantastic tale that speaks of the power of storytelling. Inspired by the structure of this timeless text, Chiara Lagani will guide young participants in composing each their own personal story starting from dream and myth. Fanny & Alexander, in preparation for the production titled Sharazade, based on The Thousand and One Nights, intended for an audience aged eleven and up, envisions a series of workshop modules aimed at exploring the fundamental questions underlying the dramaturgical project that will lead to the composition of the text and the music for the show. The show, inspired by the most famous classic of all time, is built like a continuous game of Russian dolls, unfolding through the tale offered by a girl to other children. She is Sharazade, and she composes her story starting from dream and myth, intertwining them with the issues and anxieties of our complicated present. It is, at once, a fantastic story, a reflection on storytelling and its importance, and the parable of an indecipherable society, caught at the most tragic moment of its decline, in its extreme fantasy of destruction. And it is precisely the continual opening of a new story, of a new door, with the introduction of ever different characters with whom the young audience can identify, that is the beating heart of this work, whose center holds an idea: beauty, with its life-woven stories, will be the only thing, perhaps, still able to save us. To compose an atlas/archive of themes and questions that are as close as possible to the intended audience of the show (the last two years of middle school and the first two years of high school), and consequently to the rest of the audience, some workshop modules are proposed, diversified and tailored by age (middle and high school) and divided into five macro-thematic areas: 1 · Story of Aladdin and the Genie of the Lamp / Desire: what does it mean to desire? What do you desire? How do you fulfill your desires? The fulfilled desire, the repressed desire, the procrastinated desire. 2 · The fear of the thousand and first night / Fear: what are you afraid of? How do you manage your fears? What antidotes to fear? Fear of the end of the world. 3 · Story of the caliph and the maiden / Anger and revenge. What makes you angry? What forms does anger take? What is revenge? 4 · Story of Sinbad the sailor / Love for creation. The journey. Adventure. 5 · Story of Sharazade / The language of storytelling. A story will save the world. Each module, lasting two hours, includes a practical part (based on the application of simple devices and/or theatrical games to some short excerpts of texts and stories) and a theoretical part (dialogue and extraction of the fundamental themes of the various tales) with the support of a facilitator figure (to be identified among profiles of educators, scholars of theatre for young audiences, sociologists, psychologists) with whom the youngsters can engage for the subsequent production of materials and for the discussion and reworking of the experience lived.