“Kon-Tiki” literally means “Sun God”. Kon-Tiki is the name of the raft built in the spring of 1947 by the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, who set out from the coast of Peru determined to reach the islands of French Polynesia by sea. Without oars, without an engine, using only the sea current, the trade winds and good luck: 101 days on the open sea together with a parrot and five traveling companions who had never sailed before. Thor set out to demonstrate that 1,000 years earlier the same journey could have been undertaken by primitive people fleeing from the Incas. To demonstrate that the natives of South America managed to cross the Pacific 500 years before Magellan. To demonstrate that man has always faced the open sea, out of a thirst for knowledge or driven by the hope of a better life.
With this new production, Teatro Telaio intends to address a strictly topical theme through a true story. The journey understood not only as a movement but as a discovery, research, escape. Migration understood not only as an emergency but as a distinctive characteristic of every civilization since the dawn of humanity.
The decision to involve Marcelo Sola in the project was the keystone of the show. The challenge was not to rely on a narrator or a professional actor, but to focus on a real physics and mathematics professor who, with over twenty years of teaching at the University of San Paolo in Brazil, was able to build the character on himself, giving him a spontaneity and truth that would otherwise be unthinkable. The choice of Marcelo also has a deeper meaning: he himself is the son of immigrants, his grandfather having been born in Italy and migrated from Calabria at the beginning of the 20th century to Brazil, in search of fortune. One hundred years later, Marcelo made the reverse journey, deciding to abandon Brazil and cross the Atlantic Ocean again to return to Italy and here undertake a new life and a new profession by joining the work group of the Teatro Telaio.
