Alla finestra

Baba Jaga Art and Performance APS

Playwriting and direction by Maria Grazia Pavanello
With Lara Giurdanella, Marinella Melegari, and Laura Montanari
Scenography by Sara Pelazza
Production Baba Jaga Art and Performance

The performance At the Window is born from a collection of interviews conducted in 1993 by high school students with grandparents, uncles, and neighbors, aimed at discovering what life was like in Italy before and after the enactment of racial laws and during World War II.
The words collected reveal a complex portrait: phrases of unawareness (“I didn’t know…”, “I didn’t know any Jews…”, “these things didn’t happen with us…”) alternate with memories that contradict those very statements (“maybe I had read something…”, “a classmate of mine might have been Jewish…”, “he was killed in the square, but only him…”).
The performance gives voice to that part of the population that, as Primo Levi wrote, lived in the gray area: people who, though not victims or executioners, chose not to see, not to know, or not to believe, remaining on the sidelines in the hope that everything would pass quickly. Three women — Maria, Loredana, and Irene — tell of interrupted dreams, longings, and hopes. Maria prepares for evacuation and learns the “10 commandments for the good wife” by Emma Bo; Loredana works in a factory but will end up deported to Germany. Irene tries to reconstruct her past, which she has sealed inside an old suitcase.

“All of them were waiting for peace, watching the world from a window, but…”