The policeman’s paradox

by Gianrico Carofiglio

Synopsis

Through an account of several legal cases and the methods of investigation involved, a policeman reveals the paradoxical essence of detective work and shows the inability of violence to obtain reliable results. A civil testimony for a civil theater, steeped in our everyday reality. On stage the words of someone who has experience, skill, awareness and an analytical and reflective mind, combined with gifts as a writer and poet.

The paradox and its space

This time the Arsenale has been turned into a nightclub, one of those bars where people go to listen to music, and to meet their dates. And in this space shared by audience and actors, all patrons of the same nightclub, in which the place of the theatrical action coincides with the place of the viewer, the characters of Il paradosso del poliziotto encounter each other: the Policeman, and the Female Writer who has asked him for an interview. In this bar will unfold the human and professional story of an emblematic act of comprehension. In the production I have put life and theater on two pans of the same scales, and moved the weight from side to side, making one rise and the other fall. The text has been the motor of this choice because it is theatrical only in the intention of the subtitle, a dialogue, but not in the unfolding of the action, which remains a pure conversation, although with a dramatic turn of events at the end.

With the benefit of hindsight

When you do theater you ask yourself about the form that each new work has taken.

Perhaps at a certain point in the course of your own artistic and human development life and fiction come together, like two images reflected in the same looking glass.        (M.S.)