At Mestizo Arts Festival 2016 Enrica Camporesi and Elena Mazzi showed the first draft of their text-based performance Performing the self – the interview.

Performing the self – the interview is an intimate dialogue about trust, credibility, mutual expectations and to show your own truth.

Welcome.
This is an open inquiry about the implicit value of credibility in the making of our decisions.

(pause)

Would you consider the following questions and reflect on how much trust would you need to let someone take care of your kid for an hour? Or to give someone a job as an office cleaner? How do you establish if someone is credible enough (and how enough is “enough”) to get the keys of your house? To drive your car? To be chosen as your psychologist? Is a credible person a woman who lies about her age? A teenager who hides the fact of being adopted? A man who pays a fortune to a forger for a fake new passport?

Every day we calibrate our trust, we weigh it carefully or rather instinctively to get to the conclusion. A conclusion. This instinctive process is an ancestral remnant which is fundamental to our survival. Why should we doubt it?

(pause)

But can we always trust in trust? How can someone try to take a distance from such a rooted and essential mechanism of judgment? Why should we struggle to achieve neutrality in the evaluation of another human being?

SCENE 1

(Shutter opens in retro-projection. Acid yellowish light. On proscenium, long and high curtain from wall to wall hides what happens on stage. The audience sees only sharp shadows on the screen. On stage a woman – P.O. – is sitting at a table, waiting for someone. Somewhere behind, a man – A.S. – quotes a poem)

لكنّ للذكرى يدان خفيفتان

تهيّجان الأرض بالحمّى

و للذكرى

روائح زهرةٍ ليليّةٍ

تبكي

و توقظ في دم المنفيّ حاجته إلى الإنشاد

كوني مرتقى شجني أجد زمني