La nave fantasma

On 25 December 1996, off the coast of Sicily, a small boat sunk loaded with migrants from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The victims were two hundred and eighty-three: it was the biggest naval tragedy in the Mediterranean since the end of the Second World War - a record tragically surpassed in recent years. Despite the precise testimonies of the survivors, Italian authorities and the mass media, with rare exceptions, did not deal with it: the tragedy of Christmas 1996 became a ghost shipwreck. The fishermen of the area themselves, who recovered dozens of corpses in the nets, fearing consequences for their activity, threw them back into the sea. Only five years later, with a report made possible by the testimony of the Portopalo fisherman Salvatore Lupo, the newspaper La Repubblica, through an investigation by the journalist Giovanni Maria Bellu, managed to locate and film the wreck. In June 2001 the images of the "ghost ship" went around the world but, despite the appeal of four Italian Nobel Prize winners (Renato Dulbecco, Dario Fo, Rita Levi Montalcini, Carlo Rubbia) and some parliamentary interpellations, still nothing has been done to recover the wreck and return this episode to history without lies and silence. The ghost ship is a dramatic synthesis of the vast theme, which has become increasingly urgent, connected to the theme of immigration: the desperation of migrants, the silence of the authorities and the mass media, the ferocity of human traffickers, the terrible indifference and the 'invincible fear of our society, xenophobic and racist reactions. Although based on a rigorous chronicle of events - translated onto the scene through the stories of the protagonists, with the aid of video material and the projections of drawings specially made by Emanuele Luzzati - the director's intent is to make use of all the typical elements of comic theater and cabaret, such as improvisation and the continuous and direct relationship with the public. On stage the same Bebo Storti and Renato Sarti who, in a sort of tragic, extreme and shocking cabaret, will involve the spectators in the re-enactment of that painful story and in the reflection on one of the hottest topics of today.

(Source: Teatro della Cooperativa)