When the correspondence with German philosopher Günther Anders begins, Claude Eatherly is a man who has destroyed his own life. On the morning of August 6, 1945, from the cockpit of the Straight Flush, the B29 reconnaissance plane he piloted, Claude gave the final okay for the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. At the end of his military mission, He returns home greeted as a hero, along with all the other crew members. Still, he is the only one who is unable to free himself from the ghosts of the hundreds of thousands of innocent victims he left behind, so he commits theft, robbery, attempts suicide, and abandons his family, trying in every way to make himself guilty in the eyes of society. He thus ends up being locked up indefinitely in the military psychiatric hospital in Waco, and there, one summer day in 1959, he receives a letter from Vienna, signed by Günther Anders. Günther sees in Claude the human being who embodies his philosophy; Claude sees in Günther the possibility of finding understanding and perhaps salvation. Günther helps Claude remember and put the pieces of his life back together, and at the same time, puts forth imaginations, practices, and actions to save him from his fate and to succeed together in spreading a message of peace among human beings in a world that refuses to listen to them. Claude, alone and forgotten, within the walls of a sunny cell in Waco, Günther in his cold room in Vienna: ten thousand kilometers away, the two men exchange words of affection and brotherhood that reverberate powerfully in our present. While the world seems lost in a destructive frenzy that produces a mad arms race, two fragile and frightened human beings question our role in the world and our deeper nature as complex creatures who traverse time and generations moving between creation and destruction, imaginative power and absolute evil.
Muta Imago is a theater company founded in Rome in 2006. It is led by Claudia Sorace, director, and Riccardo Fazi, dramaturg and sound artist. The company is composed of all the people who have been, are, and will be involved in creating its shows.
The continuous search for forms and stories that relate the sphere of imagination to the realm of present reality, human, political, and social, led the company to investigate over the years different forms of live arts: theater, performance, musical theater, and radio, always to look for the best form to examine in the present the relationship between human beings, their time and their feeling. Recent works produced include Three Sisters (2023), Ashes (2022) and Sonora Desert (2021). In 2022, Muta Imago won two Ubu Prizes for the show Ashes; in 2021, the Ubu Special Prize and the Rete Critica Prize for the co-creation of Radio India. 2011 Claudia Sorace won the Best Director and Best Performance Award at the XXIX Fadjr Festival in Tehran. 2009 Muta Imago won the Ubu Special Award, the ANCT Critics’ Award, and the DE.MO./Movin’UP award. Claudia Sorace won the Premio Cavalierato Giovanile della Provincia di Roma and the Valeria Moriconi International Prize the same year. Dal 2018 la compagnia è finanziata dal Ministero della Cultura come Impresa di produzione teatrale di teatro di ricerca e di innovazione; dal 2021, insieme a Daria Deflorian, cura la direzione artistica di INDEX, progetto di produzione indipendente.
Gabriele Portoghese graduated from the Silvio D’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art and began his journey under the guidance of Carlo Cecchi. Over time, he has worked with, among others, Andrea Baracco, Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Giacomo Bisordi, Valerio Binasco, Ferdinando Bruni, Fabio Condemi, Fabio Cherstich and Gianluigi Toccafondo, Daria Deflorian, Giorgina Pi, Roberto Rustioni and Federica Santoro. In 2019, he played the role of Hamlet, directed by Valerio Binasco. In the same year, together with Fabio Condemi, he edited the dramaturgy of Questo è il tempo in cui attendo la grazia (directed by Fabio Condemi). In 2020, he performed the monologue Tiresias from Kae Tempest, directed by Giorgina Pi (show winner of three Ubu awards). In 2021, with Giorgina Pi, he wrote Guida Immaginaria (directed by Giorgina Pi), and Cristiano De Fabritiis composed some of the music for Guida itself. In 2023, Federica Rosellini directed the performance/reading Orgia by Pier Paolo Pasolini. For the University of Bologna he elaborates X Elettra (Elettra fatta a pezzi – oratorio per Elettra) from Sophocles. Within the site-specific performance Termini. In any part of the planet, a project by Daria Deflorian, Muta Imago, and Antonio Tagliarini, he conceives and writes Preghierine. We want it to be a light affair. In 2024, he stars in La Vegetariana, directed by Daria Deflorian, based on Han Kang’s novel. In 2017, he won the Syracuse Press Award. In 2021, he won the Ubu Award as best performer, the Ivo Chiesa Award – Future of the Scene, and the Mariangela Melato Award.
Alessandro Berti is an actor, director, and playwright. He has directed dozens of shows and workshops since 1996. His works for the theater include SKANKRER (1996), TERRA DI BURRO (1997), ANONYMOUS TRIUMPH (2000), THE AGENDA OF SEATTLE (2001), THE QUARTER (2002), CONFINE (2006), THE FEE (2010), A CHRISTIAN (2014), LEILA OF THE TEMPEST (2016), BLACK DICK (2018), NEGRIES WITHOUT MEMORY (2020), BLIND LOVE (2022), THE HOLIDAYS (2023). In 2021, he was awarded the RICCIONE PRIZE FOR DRAMMATURGICAL INNOVATION <> (from the motivation of the jury of the Riccione 2021 prize). In 2024, he was nominated for the Ubu Prize as best actor for his performance in TRILOGY OF THE CITY OF K, a project by Fanny and Alexander and Federica Fracassi.
direction Claudia Sorace
dramaturgy and sound Riccardo Fazi
with Alessandro Berti, Gabriele Portoghese
collaboration on dramaturgy Gabriele Portoghese
literary consultancy Paolo Giordano
original music Lorenzo Tomio
set design Paola Villani
technical direction and lighting design Maria Elena Fusacchia
costumes Fiamma Benvignati
thanks to the artist Elisabetta Benassi
for INDEX Valentina Bertolino, Francesco Di Stefano, Silvia Parlani
press office Marta Scandorza
a production INDEX
in co-production with TPE – Teatro Piemonte Europa in collaboration with Politecnico di Torino – Prometeo Tech Cultures; Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale
in collaboration with AMAT and the Municipality of Pesaro
with the support of MAB Maison des Artistes Bard, ATCL / Spazio Rossellini
company financed by MiC – Ministro della Cultura
