Hey, Girl!

by Romeo Castellucci

CAST:
Silvia Costa
Sonia Beltran Napoles

Directed by: Romeo Castellucci
Original music: Scott Gibbons
Masks: Plastikart, Istvan Zimmermann

Produced by: Odeon Théâtre de l'Europe & Festival d'Automne/Paris, Steirischer herbst/Graz, Le-Maillon Théâtre/Strasbourg, de Singel /Antwerpen, Productiehuis Rotterdam (Rotterdamse Schouwburg), Cankarjev dom Ljubljana, Trafò House of Contemporary Arts/Budapest, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio
Project manager: Aldo Miguel Grompone

Play duration: 1h 15 min

Photo: Francesco Raffaelli

An artist with a unique style, Romeo Castellucci combines stage directing and fine arts in a visceral way, and the outcome places him among the world’s top stage directors. After studying Fine Arts in Bologna, in 1981 Castellucci set up Societas Raffaello Sanzio, a company he still works with.

Considered a trailblazer of the theatrical avant-garde, Castellucci is renowned as the author of a theater involving “total” perception. He staged shows based on classical works and epics, such as Gilgamesh (1990), Hamlet: The Vehement Exteriority of the Death of a Mollusk (1992), Oresteia (An Organic Comedy?) (1992), Julius Caesar (1997), Journey to the End of the Night (1999), Endogonidia Tragedy (2001-2004). In 2005 he was appointed Director of the theater section of the Venice Biennale, and in 2008 he presented The Divine Comedy after Dante as Associated Artist of the Avignon Festival.

About Hey Girl!, staged in 2006 and presented since then in all major international festivals, Castellucci says it was inspired by the image of teenage girls waiting at a bus stop in front of their school. The result is an essay on the ineffable girl’s passage from the status of a child to that of a woman. The show is a voyage among myths, incorporating aspects of this uncertain age from symbolic characters such as the Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc and Shakespeare’s Juliet. Using surrealistic costumes, footage screenings, glass explosions and the ravishing appearance of the two actresses, Hey Girl! builds a world torn between beauty and revulsion. “Hypnotically beautiful [with] a visual resonance that you find all too rarely on stage,” wrote The Financial Times after the show went on tour to London.

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