When
Friday, 27 April 2012, 10:00 p.m.
Where
Auditorium ‘La Tinaia’, Parco Corsini, Fucecchio (FI)
Press office
Camilla Rigatti
Music and the piano save lives.
Little Zhanna, supported by her father, a candy maker from Minsk, studies piano and immediately reveals an uncommon talent. But when, in 1941, the Germans invade Ukraine and many Jews, including her family, are deported to extermination camps, her childhood dream turns into a nightmare. Zhanna survives the Drobitsky Yar massacre, where German troops kill thousands of Jews.
She changes her name, gets a new birth certificate, a new birthday, a new religion. She finds salvation by playing the piano in the extermination camps to entertain the Nazi officers. Only a Chopin score hidden under her clothes protects her from the madness and horror of the world, the only shred of childhood she has left.
On one day, 27 April, between Liberation Day and the anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau extermination camp (29 April 1945), Firenza Guidi presents her new Actor’s Studio, BABY YAR, a performance that allows a member of the Frantoio di Fucecchio theatre company to test their performance limits through a text that features a single protagonist on stage. In this case, Lisa Savini, actress and musician, will play the role of Zhanna.
BABY YAR explores the human soul as a microcosm that confronts music as a means of expression. For the character of little Zhanna, the piano becomes an extension of the person. Zhanna does not play with the expert touch of a successful pianist, but rather lays herself and her identity on the keys, along with her fingers. Her entire world is associated with the dimension of the instrument, and the act of playing becomes an intimate action, which has to do with her own vital organs, which she can do good or harm to, arousing joy or despair, pain or happiness.
The protagonist of BABY YAR sits in silence for a long time before a performance. As in a real human relationship, the moment when the sense of touch intervenes is important, requires attention and has to do with a flow of energy. Zhanna’s relationship with the piano does not change with the arrival of success and the consequent salvation. On stage, her character gradually strips away the glitz of her stage triumphs to rediscover her former self, the naivety and spontaneity of childhood, where, through the difficult transition to adulthood, the piano becomes a woman and the woman becomes a piano.
BABY YAR is inspired by Greg Dawson’s novel “The Child Pianist”. Dawson tells the true story of his mother, who managed to save herself from the horrors of the Holocaust as a teenager thanks to her great talent as a musician.