On Carmelo Bene ~ How The Immemorial Body: Betraying Carmelo Bene in Nine Acts came to be.
Carmelo Bene wore glitters and make up. He engaged in stuttering, aphasic, impossible representation. He theorised a “theatre without spectacle,” wrote a manifesto against cinema, performed happenings, and eventually became a living theatre on TV. He would talk about acting as oblivion. With strong connections with the sacred powers of the magical south, Bene embraced ecstasy as an acting methodology.
Sara first saw Carmelo Bene when she was 10 on a very popular late night TV show in 1994, the year of Berlusconi’s first elections. This peculiar man in heavy foundation was alone on a stage, baroquely proclaiming his non-existence to a crowd of indignant journalists and critics. Since then, this bewitching voice has been haunting her, whispering that we don’t belong to ourselves because we don’t exist, if not through language.