At Mercadante, Davide Iodice's show: Pinocchio becomes a metaphor for human fragility

On Sunday 8 June at 6:00 pm the curtain of the Teatro Mercadante in Naples will rise on “PINOCCHIO. What is a person?”. The show, with free admission, is conceived, written and directed by Davide Iodice and promoted and financed by the Municipality of Naples, in collaboration with the Teatro di Napoli-Teatro Nazionale as part of the Cohousing Cinema Napoli project, created to promote social inclusion and active participation through art and theatrical language.

Iodice's work represents the third act of a broader artistic and cultural journey that the City of Naples has dedicated to Carlo Collodi's puppet: the work "Oh!" by Marcello Jori, a bronze Pinocchio sculpted in the magical moment in which it comes to life, on display until Sunday 28 September in Piazza Mercato as part of the "Napoli contemporanea" project, and the free workshop for children "Reading Pinocchio with all the senses", curated by playwright and director Sara Sole Notarbartolo for the Taverna Est ETS association, which will continue until Thursday 26 June in the Church of Santa Croce e Purgatorio al Mercato as part of the "Santa Croce Cult" project.

"The figure of Pinocchio - says Sergio Locoratolo, coordinator of cultural policies of the Municipality of Naples - offers us an ad hoc key to create a single language, which is able to connect different worlds: that of the written word, of artistic imagination, of theatrical expression. This is how the laboratory of the Taverna Est ETS association, the work of the artist Marcello Jori and the show of the director, playwright and pedagogist Davide Iodice originated. In a time when we speak in contrasts, the Manfredi Administration always chooses to speak in connections. And it invites citizens and visitors to rediscover the beauty that comes from the encounter between disciplines, voices and gazes".

“Step by step we follow Pinocchio around Italy: from the canals of Venice, where the show was presented on June 4 and 5, we return to where it all began, to the theater of our city, which opens to our community of reference, thanks to the will of the Municipality of Naples, free of charge, just as culture should be when it wants to be shared” – says Davide Iodice.

The show “PINOCCHIO. What is a person?” represents the culmination of a long educational and artistic journey promoted by the Scuola Elementare del Teatro APS company, an organization born to give voice and stage space to people with disabilities, neurodivergences, stories of marginalization, and paths of social reintegration. A heterogeneous company that has been able to build, under the guidance of Davide Iodice, an authentic, emotionally powerful, deeply human scenic language.

In this radical and poetic vision, Collodi's tale is reinterpreted as a metaphor for fragile and "extraordinary" existences. Pinocchio becomes the symbol of difference, of transformation, of the desire for belonging and recognition. An identity under construction, which is confronted with social judgment, with the difficulty of being accepted, with the anxiety of returning to an often imposed and inaccessible "normality". Iodice describes the puppet as "all the different ones": boys and girls with Down syndrome, autism, Williams syndrome, Asperger's, but also young people from criminal backgrounds or judicial paths, people who every day go through a laborious process of redefining their place in the world.

Davide Iodice, who has been involved in a theatrical practice with a strong social vocation for years, gives the public a necessary show. A “manifesto for and about disability”, as he himself defines it, capable of undermining the rhetoric of welfare and heroism to give back space to the human being in his fullness and complexity.

Produced by Interno 5 and Teatro di Napoli – Teatro Nazionale, “PINOCCHIO. What is a person?” has a duration of 60 minutes and represents one of the highest expressions of contemporary theater. It is a work that not only excites, but questions, moves and asks for responsibility from citizens, spectators, institutions.