BAROQUE MASQUERADE

OR HERLA KING

TO THE ORIGINS OF A CLOWN

OVVE

La Mascherata Barocca is a project of participatory artistic creation among professionals
of the performing arts, students of theFlorence Academy of Fine Arts
and students of local dance schools.
This artistic and social experiment, strongly desired by the recently deceased former artistic director of the
Teatro Fonderia Leopolda in Follonica, Eugenio Allegri, has been
repeatedly postponed due to the pandemic and finally sees its fulfillment in
this early October 2022, thus bringing to a conclusion Zaches' three-year residency
Teatro at the Teatro Fonderia Leopolda in Follonica.
This is an intensive and highly professionalizing artistic training project,
based on an intense synergy between performing arts students, students and professors
of the Academy, and performing arts professionals to bring to life, together, a theatrical performance
that inaugurates the 2022/2023 theater season.
Such intensive character of artistic creation lasting 8 days, has the intent of
reflecting the production methods of the world of entertainment, with intense and tight rhythms,
aimed at giving young people a real experience of its creative and working methods.
All the scenic material, masks and costumes, were created by students
of the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, in synergy between the courses of Makeup and theatrical mask,
of Prof. Francesco Givone (in charge of the project), Sculpture for Set Design by Prof.
Davide Tito, and Costume for the performance by Prof. Cristina Giorgetti.
On stage are 30 young students, ages 14 to 17,
from the Centro Studi Danza ascd school in Follonica.
The Baroque Masquerade is a site-specific traveling performance that unravels within
the various rooms of the theater building, with the aim of showing the structure of the theater from
unusual and sometimes unknown points of view.
As usual in Zaches Teatro Company's shows, various artistic languages meet on the
stage to give life to a multidisciplinary creation between theater,
dance, original music and circus, thanks also to the recent collaboration with
PaZo Teatro Company.
La Mascherata Barocca is a tribute to the most famous mask of the Commedia dell'Arte,
or Harlequin, whose name, in a thousand variants, has been encountered since the early Middle Ages.
Passing through four pictures, set up in a different places of the theater building, the audience will
find itself immersed in atmospheres and visions that in different historical eras have nurtured the
figure of Harlequin up to the present day.
In fact, Harlequin can be found in the infernal masnades led by Hellequin, among the demons
of medieval sacred representations and among Dante 's devils , before his
demonic character was imbued with the farcical and buffoonish traits proper to the Commedia dell'Arte.