ILIADE

The Iliad is a text, which is not an actual text. it’s non-textual origin makes me feel free to treat it as if it were a sound, as if it were a fundamental organ of the imagination. Substantially, the Iliad is an imaginary piece of imagination of shapes and sounds. What fascinates me most in the Iliad is its evocative power, and i am always impressed to find in its tales a powerful interior nearness.
What excites me is the fact that you can say everything about this text; even the Iliad’s philosophy is a fantasy and an illusion. Making conjectures on it becomes an exercise in fantasy, more or less cultured, more or less of common sense, but always of pure fantasy, and even the archaeological discovery reinforces its fantastic aspect; schleimann appears more of a wizard or an esoteric, than a man of science. The Iliad reminds me of a meteorite fallen from a far-off galaxy, of which you cannot deny its existence because it is before our eyes, and we can touch it; but where does it come from? What is it really? How has it been formed? How has it crossed other worlds to become what no-one and everybody can tell? For this reason, perhaps my first image of the Iliad - the first that comes to mind - is indeed an image that denies the concept of image and shape. Instinctively, the Iliad talks to me like a non-image, of the absence of shapes or better of its immateriality. We can say that making an inverted source it is still imagination, pure imagination; can we say that images were born initially in the imagination rather than in the image? I think we can say yes, but with this affirmation there is no pretence of appearance; rather there is a demand for creativity. When I read the Iliad for the first time I was accompanied by the sensation of always having my eyes shut, of reading with my eyelids closed, and this in a second moment made me think that there could have been a connection with the historical pretence of homer’s blindness;
Why do we want him to be blind? Perhaps because even in other people the absence of image, of figures and the sensation of reading with their eyes shut appeared to them? Perhaps, but it doesn’t really matter. so I thought to start from the absence of an image, from the overturning of the imagination, to reach an image. however, it is always very clear that this is just a concept, and it is also clear that the theatre is not a concept; how therefore to we connect these two?
I am asking my colleagues to make an effort and trust me because they ask me everyday “what do we need to do?” But in front of this story, even the most easiest question becomes the most complicated, and this confirms that the Iliad is a very mysterious and metaphysical object.
For this work, we are using all our tactics and technologies, together with innovative ideas, but all this together should arrive at a final verification, and I am afraid, and at the same time hope, that this work, which is the Iliad, will complete a specific phase of our journey.
Today, 6th february 2002, it is absolutely impossible to say what will become of our Iliad. I only believe that the words are inescapable, that the story is inescapable, and that one must assist as if one had one’s eyes shut; am I twisting the problem of the fantasy? Am I again obsessed with materialising the non-inexistent? I don’t know.