Sotto la lingua (2025)
Live performance
by Carola Demarchi and Eugenia Ingegno
Before the performance begins, each member of the audience is given a torch. The theatre is then plunged into darkness, and the performers enter from different points, moving through the space among the spectators. The light no longer belongs to the stage: it is held and directed by the audience, who must search for the performers and decide what becomes visible. At the same time, the performers move beyond the distance conventionally separating audience and action, approaching individual spectators and whispering short, intimate and unsettling phrases directly into their ears. The words are never addressed to the audience as a whole. Each phrase exists only in the proximity between one voice and one listener, turning language into a private encounter that cannot be fully shared or verified. Sotto la lingua creates an unstable exchange of agency: the spectator controls the light, but not the encounter; chooses where to look, but not what will be heard.
Presented as part of Corpi sul palco, Teatro Factory32, Milan, 13 November 2025. Introduced by Andrea Contin.
