What is the night when the alarm siren for night bombings always screams? What is it that I can’t eat black bread anymore and so I try to poach eels? What is it that I crawl against the walls so as not to be seen by the fascist militia? What is it that I look for bleach on the black market? What is it that I need 1800 lire for medicine and I don’t know how to get it? What is it that I see the Palermo massacre on May 9, 1943 and walk through it and there are no houses anymore and not even the streets and you can’t see anything because there’s dust and smoke everywhere but still what you see you can’t even recognize?
Maggio ’43 is a work that draws its inspiration from a series of interviews with people who suffered those tragic days of the bombing of Palermo, and miraculously emerged unharmed. From their narration and the fragments of memory collected begins the dramaturgical elaboration of the work that breaks down, intertwines and reworks these testimonies. They were dark times in which it was necessary to be resourceful in order to survive. They were atrocious times in which death fell unexpectedly from above or below and from black markets that crushed with skyrocketing prices. They were sick and lying times. They resemble today.
