Five performers wearing a blue horse mask will move in costume on a mix of electronic music and opera to tell together the fragility and the impetuosity of mental illness. In their parade, the performers bring on stage the madness and together the so-called normality in a grotesque form. The performers will be accompanied by a big blue horse puppet, Marco Cavallo, symbol of liberated madness and of a new vision of psychiatry.

A show written and directed by the sculptor and architect Matteo Raciti and by the actress and psychologist Chiara Gistri, freely inspired by the story of Marco Cavallo, a blue horse built together with the patients of the San Giovanni Psychiatric Hospital of Trieste who in 1973 left the institution bringing their fragility into society.

Nearby no one is normal, so said Franco Basaglia forty-three years ago at the dawn of the "Basaglia Law" (Law no. 180 of May 13, 1978 - "Accertamenti e trattamenti sanitari volontari e obbligatori" - "Voluntary and Compulsory Health Care and Treatment") which ordered the closure of asylums in Italy, marking a turning point in the world of assistance to psychiatric patients and a break with the past. One of the most amazing things of that period was the two-month workshop that Franco Basaglia, with the help of several artists including Giuliano Scabia, organized inside the San Giovanni Psychiatric Hospital in Trieste. An entire department of the structure became a creative laboratory, where a large blue horse was built and given the name of Marco, "Marco Cavallo"! When the papier-mâché animal crossed the hospital gate, dragged by the patients, the world of psychiatry changed forever: "Because opening the Institution is not opening a door, but our head in front of "this" sick person".

In the itinerant sculptural group, the bolted horse reminds us how important it is to break the wall of silence regarding psychiatric pathologies, because if it is true that this law has represented a break with the past, there are still many critical points regarding the theme of mental illness.

The show was designed in connection with the sculptural work "NEARBY NO ONE IS NORMAL" designed and built by Matteo Raciti.

Kalligeneia is a traveling theater that combines human bodies and large papier-mâché sculptures, with the intent to bring art into public space. The purpose of Kalligeneia is to promote the confrontation between art and citizenship, between beauty and civil society, mixing through installations and performances the public space-time with the artistic space-time. The will to realize this project experience under the name of Kalligeneia comes from the meeting between Matteo Raciti, sculptor, set designer and architect, and Chiara Gistri, performer, theatrical trainer and psychologist, who produce together the projects and direct the artistic proposals assisted by a series of professional figures.

Kalligeneia moves in very different areas, promoting the involvement of artists, performers, citizens, psychiatric users who have as a common denominator the compelling desire to produce art as an opportunity for dialogue, stimulus and comparison between the different parts of civil society. It also deals with training and production. The training takes place in a series of workshops and laboratories that integrate the study of the bodies as a mobile chorus that dialogues with the public space (led by Chiara Gistri) and the deepening of manual skills, materials and the collective construction of a papier-mâché sculpture (led by Matteo Raciti).

The two experiential parts are contaminated during the process of creation to integrate during the final restitution in public space. The production comes to life through the creation of performances, shows, itinerant or fixed installations, cultural events, public events that involve the release of large papier-mâché objects joined to the bodies of the performers, declining in a specific way for the type of occasion and public space and always involving different parts.

SUITABLE FOR ALL