L'alba di un torturatore
The Torturer’s Dawn - Milgram Project
Ex Manifattura Tabacchi, Modena
26/10/2005, 
21:00 27/10/2005, 23:00 28/10/2005, 18:30 29/10/2005, 17:30 30/10/2005, 18:00
concept and dramaturgy Fiorenza Menni, Pietro Babina
with the special cooperation of Adriano Zamperini
with Fiorenza Menni, Paolo Carbone, Andrea Mochi Sismondi, Pietro Pilla, Angela Presepi
direction and music Pietro Babina
capocomicato Fiorenza Menni
scenography Pietro Babina (concept) Giovanni Brunetto, Luca Piga (realisation)
stage manager Giovanni Brunetto
video Marco Grassivaro
production Romaeuropa Festival, Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, Festival Temps d'Images - Ferme du Buisson / Scène Nationale de Marne la Vallée, Teatrino Clandestino
in collaboration with Drodesera>Centrale Fies, Festival delle Colline Torinesi, Ca.Cu.Bo.
duration 1h20'
Teatrino Clandestino brings the final piece in the Milgram Project, which draws on the famous experiment performed by social psychologist Stanley Milgram on the relationship between authority and obedience.
“The extermination of European Jews carried out by Nazis is only the most conspicuous and abominable from among a countless series of immoral acts perpetrated by thousands of individuals in the name of obedience. Every day we can witness, if even on a reduced scale, similar spectacles of behaviour: normal people who destroy their fellow-citizens to comply with orders which they consider it their duty to obey. Are we therefore to conclude that obeying authority, celebrated from time immemorial as a virtue, becomes a vice when it serves a wrong cause?”
(Obeying authority Stanley Milgram, 1962)
The Torturer’s Dawn (L’alba di un torturatore) is the concluding stage in the Milgram Project, a reflection by Teatrino Clandestino on the celebrated experiment of social psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933-84), who was prompted to enquire into the commonplace nature of evil in the wake of the Adolf Eichmann trial in Israel. Eichmann was the “common man” who freighted Jews to the death camps during the Nazi deportations. The outcome of the experiment had an enormous impact on the culture of democratic states and provides a key to understanding acts which range from administrative violence to torture.
Teatrino Clandestino recognises in Milgram’s work a theme of outstanding relevance: the idealised expulsion on the part of society of dissident elements. It questions our governments’ concept of presumed democracy, analysing the need to define our own moral values, which do not necessarily correspond to those of the authorities. It also invites us to reflect further on how much responsibility we as individual citizens share in events.
The project came about not so much in response to staging requirements as a need to analyse a striking fact. The reader cannot help noticing that Milgram’s text contains similes which parallel the discipline of the theatre, similes which are deeply revealing of human nature.
Teatrino Clandestino web site
