This is probably the most striking moment of this 77th edition of the Festival d’Avignon. Brazilian director Carolina Bianchi presents her first show at the festival, A Noiva eo Boa Noite Cinderela, the first chapter in a trilogy about the macabre side of rape.
Rumor has it that this is a room you can’t get away with. Viewers who attend director Carolina Bianchi’s show know this. Absolutely discouraging, at least 18 years old, The Bride and Goodnight Cinderella (The bride and good night Cinderella) is the first chapter in a trilogy about sexual violence and its destructive consequences.
The audience is tense, faces closed, waiting for the play to begin. Carolina Bianchi comes dressed all in white to read excerpts from Portuguesehell by Dante or explain paintings by Botticelli inspired by a story from the decameron by Boccaccio. We see a horseman who goes hunting and whose prey is a woman. In the end she is gutted and eaten by the dogs.
Violence calls violence
Justified bitch strength (bitch strength) this first chapter revives the story of the Italian performer Pippa Bacca and her work Brides on Tour (2008). Pippa Bacca hitchhiked across Europe in a wedding dress. This symbolic proposal for peace and reunification ended with the rape and murder of Pippa upon her arrival in Turkey.
Carolina Bianchi tells the story of these women and analyzes the absurdity of goodness and kindness in our humanity. She is drinking a vodka tonic into which she has put a sleeping pill which in Brazil is “Good night Cinderella” (Good night Cinderella). This substance is also called “drug for rape“, used in bars by sex offenders to attack their sleeping victims.
“The artist must sabotage himself. The public must stop being protected.”, quotes Carolina Bianchi. She continues reading her essay as the drug’s effects spread. She barely manages to read, bumps into her microphone and ends up on the white table in the middle of her notes. It multiplies the references to extreme performances that have marked the history of theater, littered with scarification, self-mutilation or immersion in animal corpses.
dance of death
It takes three to four minutes. The public, which has been silently waiting for the director to go on the pill, is now restless and petrified by what is likely to happen. Actors arrive carrying Carolina’s lifeless body, which they begin to undress, leaving her in a nightgown.
They unfurl a huge black tarp revealing a black car, while others set up transparent plastic covers showing the various states of decay of a human body, from decaying flesh to skeletons to whitish powder residue.
The successive scenes capture our attention without ever letting it go, leaving the viewer paralyzed and caught up in Carolina Bianchi’s languid presence. when will she wake up What is she risking?
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Two screens transcribe what the director wanted to say before giving in. After literally drinking alcohol, the performers waddle in a frenzied, macabre dance, emptying bottles onto their bodies as they do so. One of them appears to be raped by the car’s metal body, amid terrifying screams.
The staging is dark, cramped, disturbing, almost morbid. Carolina Bianchi is locked in the trunk of the car before being placed on the hood. The eight performers approach their vulnerable and weak bodies like scavengers. The rest of this moment belongs to those who will attend the show.
“A Noiva eo Boa Noite Cinderela”, Chapter 1 of the “Cadela Força” trilogy on the European stage of the Maillon Théâtre de Strasbourg on January 31st, February 1st and 2nd, 2024.
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