“Getting lost in Roseline is the best way to live Roseline”
Text by: Fiammetta Cesana
Until the 3rd of June in Milan, you have the chance to experience the theatre’s well-rounded performance of Roseline. Forget about the old-fashion audience sitting in the stalls for hours, whose contribution to the staging is an applause or, at the utmost, a standing ovation… Today you can become integral and active part of the actual mise-en-scène. And this is a dramagate. You will be immersed into a parallel dimension made of multi-sensory experiences, storytelling at multiple levels and intricate settings. With the aim of physically including you inside the narrative framework, the dramagate gives into your choices and plays with your senses.
“Roseline doesn’t have a time, Roseline doesn’t have a place… Roseline is an unexplored world, but most of all an experience”.
The story takes its inspiration from Shakespeare and has been adapted to a contemporary context. Stage and stalls do not exist in Roseline: you will be free to explore all the scenic spaces at your disposal, strolling next to the actors and living first-hand their stories. Once entered you will become part of a new world, you will sense its smell and hear its sounds, you will walk across its hallways on the hunt of its secret chambers, discovering plots and hidden stories. Every step will be a choice you make and every await a new find. Satch (Paolo Sacerdoti), the 24-four-years-old creator of Rosaline, is the occult director of the dramagate. He controls over the whole performance but just letting things happen…
“To make Roseline we were looking for a place which had an aura of mystery, a central location and right size and shape. Because of its big spaces, beautiful gardens and unique architecture this building really seemed perfect to create the world of Roseline.” (Pulsarts)
The wings of a theatre would certainly have been too small to host Roseline, so Pulsarts, the Milanese production company, took the entire 3.500 square meters building of historical Palazzo Calchi Taeggi, where Satch, alongside Giancarlo Dazzi and Mirko Camisa, the set designers, gives life to a world of power struggles, fratricidal wars and mysterious disappearances. Pulsarts has restored this building abandoned for several years, paving the way to a gentrification of the whole urban area of Porta Vigentina. With an innovative and international show, the production company aims to create a new collaborative action between private and public sectors within the neighbourhood. Not only, the choice of this location reveals another important civic commitment. Pulsarts collaborates with the charity “Emergenza Freddo” to host in the building about fifty homeless people from January to March, installing hot water boilers at its own expense, and fixing a few things to improve the accommodation and the use of the space : a nice bond between culture and community. To involve these different services, there have been free shows for the Milan Foundation’s members, and facilities have been introduced for people registered at the Local Library.
Lastly it’s important to remember that Pulsarts is also giving back the building’s courtyard, the garden and the gymnasium, completely refurbished and rehabilitated through an intervention at the company’s expense. So the dramagate is seen as a positive chance to bring to life new socio-cultural meanings for the city’s functions.