La ClasseFabiana Iacozzilli I Cranpi

La Classe is a documentary work interweaving puppets and human actors, to create a collective ritual suggestive of Tadeusz Kantor's The Dead Class and George Tabori's The Cannibals. The adults in the narrative, represented by marionettes made by Fiammetta Mandich, revisit childhood memories marked by the fear of corporal punishment. 

Fabiana Iacozzilli breathes life into this story, drawing on her own experiences of the Sisters of Charity primary school, in particular in connection with her teacher Sister Lidia. The memories, personified by pieces of wood, move without pathos on tables evoking schoolroom desks, but also slaughterhouse tables or the operating tables of some forgotten experiment. 

Amid the silence, all we hear is the sound of pencils writing and classmates breathing. The parents simply sketch on the corpse of a blackboard, their drawings soon vanishing. In the silence of their steps, these small wooden bodies make their way through the terrifying world of Sister Lidia, the only living presence beyond the view of marionettes and audience. 

Within this exploration of fragments of past memories, there emerges the recollection that Sister Lidia gave Fabiana the task of directing a short scene for a school play, perhaps shaping her pupil's vocation. 

The work delicately navigates the intricate interaction between memory, puppets and human experience, to weave a disturbing narrative which transcends the boundaries of traditional narration.