Orchids

Theatre maker Pippo Delbono [1959] has fifteen performers, people with a disability and street artists at his disposal. They have placed themselves in the service of art, and of him – the Italian Grand Master. He turns the fifteen into living paintings. But these will never hang level, because Delbono has a soft spot for lives that have come out of joint. One of his performers is Bobò, a deaf-mute man who spent 45 years in a mental home before becoming part of this much talked-about company.

Orchids is a chain of intriguing, baroque collages. Delbono toys with references to Catholicism and homosexuality and likes to blur the boundaries between what is real and what is fake. His tableaus are so drenched in symbolism and emotions that many of them drip from their frames. His textual inspiration comes from the likes of Shakespeare, Kerouac, Deep Purple and Büchner. For Pippo Delbono the orchid is the most enchanting of flowers, and the most depraved at the same time, “because you cannot see whether it is real or fake – just like the times we are living in right now.” A hallucinatory Gesamtkunstwerk about lying the truth.

La Repubblica” “A beautiful piece of work, full of rare tenderness. It tells us who Pippo Delbono really is: the craziest, least polished, most exaggerated talent in Italian theatre.”
The Timeout: "It moves you, cracks you up; it bludgeons you with its force, and shakes you with its fragile beauty."
Napolike: "The theater returns to its original role: to desperately find meaning in life. To continue, despite everything, to talk about love."

Dutch premiere

Spoken in Italian, Dutch and English surtitles

concept | regie | film | image: Pippo Delbono
performance: Dolly Albertin, Gianluca Ballarè, Bobò, Margherita Clemente, Pippo Delbono, Ilaria Distante, Simone Goggiano, Mario Intruglio, Nelson Lariccia, Gianni Parenti, Pepe Robledo, Grazia Spinella
production: Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, Teatro di Roma, Nuova Scena - Arena del Sole - Teatro Stabile di Bologna, Théâtre du Rond Point - Parigi, Maison de la Culture d’Amiens - Centre de Création et de Production