Caligola

In Caligula by Albert Camus, staged at the Ghione Theater under the direction of Gennaro Duccilli, the figure of the Roman emperor is presented as a visionary character who, irreparably marked by the death of his adored sister and lover Drusilla, tortures himself in the search for the impossible by falling into a maelstrom of despair and cruelty.

The director chose to set the story on the northern shore of Lake Nemi near Rome, where the sanctuary of Diana once existed, which boasts very ancient origins. In fact, Caligula built on the lake, to celebrate rites and festivals in honor of the goddess, two huge ships bearing masonry constructions which, it is not known when, ended up at the bottom of the lake and were recovered in the 1920s. One hypothesis is that Caligula, hated for his debauchery and cruelty, had been struck by damnatio memoriae, that is, the erasure of any trace concerning a person.

The four-act play, written by Camus in 1938, together with the novel The Stranger and the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, both from 1942, is part of the so-called "trilogy of the absurd", in which Caligula represents the struggle between individual conscience and the political and intellectual bureaucracy, traveled through the tragic events of a mad and cruel emperor.

With Gennaro Duccilli and the actors of the Theater of light and shadow.

Photo credits: courtesy of Ghione Theater official site