A new play written and directed by Firenza Guidi
I enter the lobby of Fucecchio Hospital. The oldest building overlooking Via Castruccio. My eyes look up the stairs where the ‘tranquille’ once lived: that is what the inmates of the hospital’s ‘Harmless Demented’ ward were called. I look up. In the silence of the moment, I seem to hear their slow or quick footsteps; I see their faces looking down at me from corridors, slits and barred windows. Their hair cut close to the scalp and short at the nape of the neck, a smile or a clap of hands as if in joy: images from a film I have constructed from the fragments of memories of those who still remember them: “I used to see them from the wall when I went to sell chickens in the market square. They wore grey aprons with pockets. They laughed, sang and wore colourful bows! – I was afraid to walk past those windows as a child. I could hear them shouting and, sometimes, it sounded like screams of terror. – There were two twin girls, very young. They called me by name and clapped their hands. – One of them always wanted lipstick and the other had a box full of postcards that she read and reread all day long. – Every now and then they would have a tussle, but there was Caleo, the nurse who watched over them. He was big. A huge man.”
In 1927, the psychiatric ward, commonly known as the madhouse, was established at the hospital in Fucecchio as a branch of San Salvi, the Provincial Psychiatric Hospital of Firenza. The peak number of patients reached 130, all women, whom the people of Fucecchio called ‘the quiet ones’. The patients lived in a state of imprisonment: they were always locked up in their large rooms and could only get some fresh air on an open terrace enclosed by a very high metal fence. The asylum was closed on 12 October 1967.
When
26.11.2011 – 27.11.2011
Saturday 26 at 9.00 pm and 11.00 pm | Sunday 27 at 6.00 pm, 9.00 pm and 11.00 pm
Where
Il Frantoio, Parco Corsini – Fucecchio
Admission
€10 (concessions €8). Limited places, booking essential.
Contact
For information and bookings: info@elanfrantoio.org / 0571 261143 / 346 7267628
