Filomena Campus, Italy/UK

Performer and director: Filomena Campus
Soundtracks: Steve Lodder
Duration: 50 minutes - Performed in English and Italian

a performance/presentation about Franca Rame

In 2021 Filomena Campus devised a jazz-theatre duo project, To Be Franca, with pianist and composer Ste- ve Lodder, in collaboration with Fondazione Fo Rame. This project is part of her ongoing PhD at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, which investigates how the work and legacy of Italian perfor- mance-maker, author, political activist, and archivist Franca Rame (1926-2013) contribute to create contem- porary feminist performance-making practice.

Filomena Campus’s solo performance/presenta- tion, created for Transit Festival, fuses adaptations of scenes from To be Franca, intertwined with elements of her research inspired by Italian feminist theorist Adri- ana Cavarero. Vocal improvisations, arrangements of Fo/Rame’s songs and new compositions by Lodder and Campus, are interspersed with extracts from Rame’s texts, interviews, and a letter she wrote few months be- fore her death, which represents her surreal dialogue with a star fallen from the sky. This presentation aims at providing new insights into this multifaceted talent- ed artist, celebrating and acknowledging Franca Rame on her own right, as well as for the work she created together with her partner, the Nobel Prize-winning the- atre practitioner Dario Fo.

Please wear or bring something red.