CIVIL READINGS – UPCOMING EVENTS:
I AM CAPTAIN WONDER
by Michele Mariniello
Friday, March 27 9:00 PM – at Spazio Polline – Milan
In a bare room, under the cold light of a neon lamp, Met holds his mother captive, tied to a chair. He is not a criminal, but a young man driven by a profound crisis, determined to force a confrontation with his past. Yet what begins as a punitive mission quickly turns into an intense psychological duel, where the line between victim and executioner dissolves, revealing the toxic and unbreakable nature of their bond.
Into this two-person clash enters a third, enigmatic presence: Captain Marvel, the comic-book hero Met idolized as a child. His appearance disrupts the realism of the scene, pushing the confrontation into a surreal and grotesque dimension where the ideal of superheroism collides with stark reality.
Between threats and fragments of a daily life that has never truly been forgotten, the play explores the weight of family inheritance and the inability to sever the umbilical cord. A ruthless and honest journey through the ruins of the past, in search of a possible truce between a son demanding his right to be seen and a mother unwilling to concede anything: a reflection on the necessity of forgiveness, even when it seems to require the destruction of everything that once was.
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What is oil for?
In a sea of waiting and silence that neither of them could name, the meeting between the boy and the adult becomes an oil stain: a shadow that expands in each of them, forever changing who they thought they were. The staged reading will be held Sunday, December 14th at 4:00 pm at Spazio Polline – Milan.
CAST
SYNOPSIS
Where is the line between victim and executioner?
Two voices. Two eras. Two solitudes touch and intertwine. A boy from 1992 and a professor from 2025 converse across time, evoking memories, failures, desires, and wounds. The two meet through a series of private tutoring sessions. The boy seeks listening and recognition; the professor, consumed by the past and unable to process his own failures, transforms that relationship into an emotional playground.
A bond develops between the two that runs through the pages, one voice reflecting the other, a dialogue between a boy who longs to grow up and an adult who has never been a boy. They are bound by water: the sea of childhood, the pools of competitive sports, the fluid matter of science and memory. But over that water looms the black shadow of oil: a viscous substance, a symbol of distorted growth, of a contaminated world, of a conscience that finds no redemption. A drop of oil can infect the sea, just as a gesture can transform and corrode someone's life forever. What remains is a body that is no longer the same, a tainted conscience, a sea that will never be clear again.
What's the Use of Oil? is a poetic and disturbing text that attempts to explore the vulnerability of adolescence, the power of words, the weight of gestures. A text that neither condemns nor absolves, but forces the viewer to look where we often prefer to look away.