performances — Francesco Pedraglio

Casa Tomada

Performance with 5 actors, 3 neon and various lights, 2018

To use the architectural envelope of an abandoned house - its walls, doors, windows, its corners and jambs - as a mechanism to dictate the structuring of a story to tell live. Each room, one act.

A story in 3 acts or 3 stories in one score

Performance for an Italian staircase, hand printed carpet 20 meters long, spoken word, 201 7

Descripción de una intervista

Hand painted posters, metal, plasterboard, car, spoken word, 2015 (with Tania Pérez Córdova)

FACTS:

- He moves a temporary wall previously constructed to cover one of the two doors and blocks one entrance
- With a knife, he cuts a frame into the temporary wall and partially reveals the street behind
- He starts talking…
- Imagine 9 possible scenarios for Calle Santo Tomas…
- Using the leftover cut off from the temporary wall, he traces the contour of a frame on a large sheet of paper
- Scenario 1: a man walking down a busy market with a crate of avocados on his left shoulder…
- Using a brush, he glues a sheet of paper to the wall
- Scenario 2: a fleeting love story… he draws the contour, glues paper to the wall
- Scenario 3: a detective story… drawing and glueing
- Scenario 4: the beginning of a novel as a yet-to-be-written story… drawing and glueing
- Then again: the intermezzo story, the patriotic story, the filmic story, the dark story, the surreal story… all while glueing and pasting.
- In the meantime, night falls over the whole scene
- Outside on the street, a parked car with hazard lights on
- The alarm goes off
- She lowers the driver’s window
- A yellow frame is fitted onto the temporary wall as to perfectly frame the street, the sidewalk, the parked car, and her…
- Now turn of about 180 degrees on your own axis
- The 10th scenario is about her dream and goes more or less like this:
- A man and a woman, a dusty road, a car and a gun

The Melody is in the eye (words are just the left hand)

Performance for 2 actors and a 3 m long wooden pole, 2015

Working with 2 actors - a woman and a man - and using the trope of a series of couple’s arguments as a machine for narration and self-definition, Pedraglio presents 5 scripted scenes for continues, looped quarrels happening in different locations of the fair. Each sketch draws from a multitude of sources: literary and filmic references, cliches, stereotypes and personal references etc.

The performance presents the idea of couple’s arguments as a device for fast-forwarded storytelling, for syncopate speech, for fragmented narrative paths, ultimately analysing ideas of power and reciprocal control in relation to a quotidian use of language.