The name Romeo Castellucci was on everyone’s lips after his representative work “Hey Girl!” was presented at F/T 09 Spring. This autumn the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio leader returns to Japan with the consecutive staging of “Inferno” “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso”, a trilogy that has already shaken audiences across the world.

Does Paradise really exist ? That is what man is constantly asking himself

The third part of the trilogy is in the shape of a live installation where the spectator is facing the work alone, giving the feeling that he is watching his own reflection in a mirror. In Inferno, man is excluded from the elect, but here he is excluded from the world, condemned to the total devotion to the sole glory of God the creator. “I think that it is the most terrible canto,” says Castellucci , “a form of reversed exclusion and not a welcome!”.

Creating his own “La Divina Commedia”

When he was appointed associated artist at the 2008 Avignon Festival, Castellucci chose to work with one of the most important literary works of Western civilization; Dante’s The Divine Comedy. The worldview according to The Divine Comedy continually exerts heavy influence on both the Western culture and the rest of the world. Maintaining that every attempt to stage Dante’s magnum opus would be an impossible task, Castellucci has chosen to face the work by “becoming Dante”. Loosely inspired by the masterpiece, Castellucci’s re-interpretation approaches the majestic spectacle dealing with the themes of life and death, from a contemporary point of view.