Fragments of a revolutionary discourse

A certain theatrical play is not always suitable for every audience. The level of awareness reached by the spectators about the very fact of theatre­going strongly depends on where they live. Due to economic situation and to dramatic literacy, it is most probably a matter of environment. If the question is whether a certain play can be proved to be relevant (more than simply suitable) in one country as well as in another, it goes without saying that an answer can be infinitely more tricky and hard to find. Contrary to what one might think, this “difficulty of placement” into a global audience's imagery can be even more evident when the play deals not with private and intimate issues, but with those weightier topics which every country is forced to face. This short preamble brings up a consideration about how complex it is to be a critic of a trans­national production in contemporary Europe and how that very experience can challenge a critic’s analysis. My example is a joint project launched in February 2012 by the Teatro Stabile di Torino (the main state­subsidized theatre in Turin, Italy) and Volksbühne am Rosa­Luxemburg Platz in Berlin, Germany around two separated stagings of Bertolt Brecht's Fatzer Fragment (Italian version directed by Fabrizio Arcuri and German version by René Pollesch).