CASCA LA TERRA / THE EARTH FALLS

Casca la terra / the earth falls is a grotesque comedy that addresses two central themes for today’s twenty- and thirty-year-olds: work and family. A bitter metaphor of our society where there is no work and consequently the birth rate is at an all-time low. If for thirty-year-olds the dream of the future is nothing more than the chimera of an inheritance – a permanent job, a house, a family, children, a pension, for twenty-year-olds the only possibility is to take part in a grandiose plan, crazy and destructive to conquer immortality, or at least to be able to say they tried.

A large window separates the inside world inside from the outside world. In this interior there are four characters: Adrian and Raquel, two “old” men of thirty and Jona and Magdalaine, two young men of twenty. Magdalaine dreams of becoming the mother of the new Messiah, she reads the Bible and eats cat biscuits while Jona, the future father, prostitutes herself to make ends meet for the family and shows solidarity with those who take to the streets to demonstrate: students, workers, exodus workers. Raquel, forced into a wheelchair by an accident at work, questions Adrian, who committed suicide after being fired, does not want to let him go. 

The play was written in 2011, published by Kurumuny Edizioni in the collection “Lo scannatoio del Lunedì” which contains two other texts by Fabio Chiriatti, “Mappugghje”, with which the author won the 2013 Raduga Award “Young author of the year ” and “I Saburchi”, with which he received a mention at the Hystrio Scritture di Scena Award, also in 2013.