In 2014, twenty-two-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen. Before committing suicide, he released his manifesto, “My Twisted World”, which collected the significant events of his life, from childhood to the massacre. Elliot was a so-called “incel”, an involuntary celibate. In Twisted World, Elliot’s mind is transformed into an interactive stage video game. An unconventional show that confronts us with the most extreme contemporary generational fears. 

The show can be followed live on the online streaming platform Twitch on twistedworld channel 

Winner of Mittelyoung 2024

Twisted World, chosen for its relevance, risk, innovation, and the complexity of its construction.

Curatores Mittelyoung 2024

A retirement home in a small Slovenian town, the stories of its residents intertwine. Isolation, loneliness, illness, regrets: life is observed through the most relevant point of view, proximity to death. It is a bittersweet comedy without words, based on true stories and a game of masks in the manner of commedia dell’arte. A contemporary fable celebrating life. When was the last time you sat in a comfortable armchair and looked through the window without saying a word?

Italian premiere

Nonverbal show

After the theatrical adaptation, the first part of the trilogy Inabili alla morte/Nezmožni umreti (Unfit for death), the acoustic version in reading for four actors of Joseph Roth’s The Emperor’s Tomb, already created in co-production with RAI FVG for RAI Radio3, arrives at Mittelfest. Nicola Bortolotti, Francesco Migliaccio, Camilla Semino Favro and Simone Tangolo tell the story of the madhouse of mothers, lovers, swindlers, desperate people from the suburbs, struggling with the upheavals and disorders that turned Europe upside down between the First and Second World Wars.

What if Cividale were not an Italian town close to Slovenia, but a town of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the border with Russia? What if the river, church and tavern of Cividale were instead the river, church and tavern of Zlotogrod, the literary town where Joseph Roth set several stories? An itinerant show of theatre and circus through the centre of two overlapping towns, under the guidance of an inflexible weights and measures checker determined to unearth false weights. You know, however, that “even officials are human beings”.

World premiere

Itinerant show through the city centre of Cividale del Friuli
Comfortable clothing and water are recommended

The characters of The Burrow huddle there: they observe our world from their shelters. Entering their meanders, inside the Church of Santa Maria dei Battuti, one ends up on a comic and disturbing journey, together with figures poised between the difficulty of resisting reality and the temptation to escape it. “Each of Kafka’s characters,” Milan Kundera noted, “is locked into the joke of their own life, like a fish in an aquarium – and it doesn’t amuse them at all. Because a joke is only amusing to those who are outside the aquarium; Kafkianism, on the other hand, gets us into the bowels of the joke”.

World premiere

Itinerant show in the dungeons of the Church of Santa Maria dei Battuti

The Jews and the People of “Men” have shared the same fate of persecution for centuries. Peoples in every way, but without bureaucracies, armies, police, straddling borders. Ebrei e zingari (Jews and Gypsies) is a recital of songs, music, Roma, Sinti and Jewish stories that resonate with the common vocation of people in exile. Music and civil theatre to unhinge conformism and proclaim the non-negotiability of the freedom and dignity of all human beings. Moni Ovadia returns to Mittelfest with his historic work that tells us about humanity wandering in a time of upheaval and chaos.

Confirmed in Piazza Duomo
From now on, indoor shelter will no longer be possible

A lyric poet and prose writer, Pierluigi Cappello’s work has crossed the verse forms of his mother tongues, Friulian and Italian, combining the sounds of poetry with his ability to narrate the metaphysical starting from the minute and concrete dimension of things, even the most arid and hard. Wandering between Cappello’s only novel, Questa libertà (This Freedom), and the poems, Giuseppe Battiston and musician Piero Sidoti pay homage to the author’s poetry, juxtaposing Italian and Friulian music and words, in a break and play with the usual forms and places, to rediscover within them the imaginative and free power of evocation.

World premiere

The show is moved in the Church of San Francesco

Performed in Italian and Friulian with Italian surtitles

Loutkoviště (Puppets) is a fantastic and surprising ‘puppet playground’ open to all ages. It magically appears in Parco della Lesa with endless stories to play and discover, reminiscent of an old Czech tradition. With five small stages, each one with a different theme, more than sixty puppets and a mysterious machine for inventing fairy tales, Loutkoviště offers a space where imagination can run wild and expand the horizons of young and old.

Free entrance from 9.00 to 13.00

Family Project
For all ages

The installations are theatre games open to children and families
Interactive installation. There are no actors, but an artist will help animate the Začátkovač, “a machine for creating stories”

After The Handke Project, Jeton Neziraj returns to Mittelfest with a biting, satirical comedy about peace negotiations. From Northern Ireland to the Middle East, from Kosovo to the Russia-Ukraine war: what goes on behind the scenes of a negotiation? Is it possible to negotiate peace? Who does it? A show that confronts us with the hopes, challenges and hypocrisies that accompany a peace agreement – what if it was just a truce? “If war has its demons,” asks director Blerta Neziraj, “what does peace have? Who is the opposite of these demons?”

Italian premiere

Show in English with Italian surtitles

In 2014, twenty-two-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen. Before committing suicide, he released his manifesto, “My Twisted World”, which collected the significant events of his life, from childhood to the massacre. Elliot was a so-called “incel”, an involuntary celibate. In Twisted World, Elliot’s mind is transformed into an interactive stage video game. An unconventional show that confronts us with the most extreme contemporary generational fears. 

The show can be followed live on the online streaming platform Twitch on twistedworld channel 

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Citciat

The UCCI UCCI company meets the public on Thursday, July 18 at 7:30 PM at the National Archaeological Museum of Cividale.
Hosted by curator Andreas Garivalis
Free entry

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WINNER MITTELYOUNG 2024

Twisted World, chosen for its relevance, risk, innovation, and the complexity of its construction.

Curatores Mittelyoung 2024