Review: “Little Funerals” Reimagines Collective Mourning Rituals

Little Funerals (Piccoli Funerali)

Written by Maurizio Rippa

Performed by Maurizio Rippa (voice) and Amedeo Monda (guitar)

Presented by 369gradi

May 11, 2023 at BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, 2474 Westchester Ave, The Bronx, NY

May 12, 2023 at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU, 24 W 12th St, New York, NY

May 13, 2023 at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island, NY

Maurizio Rippa and Amedeo Monda (guitar). Photo courtesy 369gradi
Maurizio Rippa’s Little Funerals began with the writer and performer’s explanations of its origins in his dissatisfaction with the traditional, Catholic funerals that are standard in his native Italy. Regardless of the age of the deceased or the manner in which they died, the funerals are all the same, he explained via translation by the In Scena! Italian Theater Festival's artistic director Laura Caparrotti. This lack of ability to personalize the ritual for collective mourning led to his creation of Little Funerals, part spoken word, part song, but, according to Rippa, neither play nor musical performance.

Rippa’s performance, accompanied by Amedeo Monda on the guitar, alternated brief monologues in which he spoke in the voice of the dead, performed in English, with songs, sung mostly in Italian. Rippa’s simplistic black trousers and tunic provided the neutral backdrop onto which he projected a wide range of voices of all genders and ages with a sense of the pathos and absurdity of life’s final moments, often both at the same time. For example, one vignette told the story of an older man nearly reunited with a first love only to be the victim of a hit and run accident as he was crossing the street to meet her at a café. The tragedy of this failed reunion was punctuated by the final words he heard as he lay dying on the pavement—the automated voice of the GPS in the car that had hit him.
Maurizio Rippa. Photo courtesy 369gradi
Rippa’s poignant and wry delivery of his spoken lines was complemented by his outstanding sung performance. His powerful countertenor, coupled with the virtuosity of Monda’s guitar playing, evoked Baroque lute songs. The urban bucolic setting of Casa Italiana’s outdoor terrace was a perfect backdrop for these songs, evoking the intimate settings of lute song performance. The occasional ambient street noise and bird song, rather than detracting from the performance, only served as reminder of the quotidian nature of grief, that while one person grieves, the rest of the world carries on as normal.

The final vignette memorialized someone whose name was forgotten, truly the most tragic of all deaths. At this point, Rippa invited audience members to write the name of a departed loved one on an index card and come forward to place it in a wooden box. While this audience participation could have become saccharine or trite, it instead became a moving collective ritual that nearly everyone in attendance shared in. It brought the production back to Rippa’s explanation at the beginning regarding his dissatisfaction with traditional funerals. Although Little Funerals predates the COVID-19 pandemic, it is perhaps especially apt in its aftermath, recalling the time in which all mourning was by necessity solitary. While traditional mourning rituals may be found wanting, clearly there is still a need to mourn collectively.

-Stephanie Pietros

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: "How To Eat an Orange" Cuts into the Life of an Argentine Artist and Activist

Image
How To Eat an Orange Written by Catherine Filloux Based on the writing of Claudia Bernardi Directed by Elena Araoz Presented by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club at The Downstairs at La MaMa 66 E 4th St., Manhattan, NYC May 30-June 16, 2024 Paula Pizzi. Photo by Steven Pisano How To Eat an Orange , making its world premiere at La MaMa, does in fact include a real orange as a prop, and its multifarious symbolizations–evoking at different points cultural specificity, family history, matriarchal inheritance, and even a skull–are representative of the play's boundary-blurring, non-linear presentation of memory. The memories in question belong to visual artist, educator, and activist Claudia Bernardi , who lived through several years of her native Argentina's military junta, which held power from 1976 to 1983, before departing her country and eventually settling in the United States. How To Eat an Orange , from Catherine Filloux, a French Algerian American award-winning playwright,...
Read more

Review: The Immersive "American Blues: 5 Short Plays by Tennessee Williams" Takes Audiences on a Marvelously Crafted Journey

Image
American Blues: 5 Short Plays by Tennessee Williams Written by Tennessee Williams Directed by Jim Niesen Presented by the Irondale Ensemble Project at The Space at Irondale 85 South Oxford St., Brooklyn, NYC October 27-November 26, 2023 Shadenia Savid in Moony's Kids Don't Cry . Photo by Natasha Rotondaro In 1948, Tennessee Williams published American Blues , a collection of five one-act plays, and a remarkable new production of this collection by Brooklyn's Irondale shows that these works have lost none of their power to both entertain and challenge audiences in the intervening three-quarters of a century. Comprising plays written in the decade between 1936 and 1946 - Moony's Kids Don't Cry (1936); The Dark Room (1939); The Case of the Crushed Petunias (1941); The Long Stay Cut Short, or, the Unsatisfactory Supper (1946); and Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1946) - American Blues represents the second part of Irondale's American Century, the first install...
Read more

Review: From Child Pose to Stand(ing) Up: "Yoga with Jillian" and "Penguin in Your Ear" at the Women in Theatre Festival

Image
Yoga with Jillian Written by Lia Romeo Directed by Andrew W. Smith Presented by Project Y Theatre and Richard Jordan Productions in association with The Pleasance June 2-17, 2023 Penguin in Your Ear Written and performed by Eliza Bent Directed by Jess Barbagallo June 10, 2023 Part of the Women in Theatre Festival , presented by Project Y Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres Michole Biancosino. Photo courtesy of Project Y Theatre This June, Project Y Theatre Company presents the eighth annual installment of its Women in Theatre Festival (WIT), which showcases new work by women and maintains "more than 50% female representation of all artists involved." This year, the festival includes a lobby installation project, titled In the Betweens , from scenic designer Chen-Wei Liao, through which audience members pass on their way into the theater proper. One first chooses first between "light" and "dark" rooms and then moves into "the gardens" before re...
Read more