Farmanimalfarm

Farmanimalfarm is an adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm performed in celebration of the centennial of the author’s birth by the University Theatre Center CUT “La Torre” of the University of the Studico of Tuscia, Viterbo, in collaboration with the Qteatro and with Teatro Eliocentrico.

In Orwell’s story, a group of barn animals overthrow their human masters and set up an egalitarian society of their own. Eventually the animals’ intelligent and power-loving leaders, the pigs, sabotage the revolution and form a dictatorship whose bondage is even more oppressive than that of their former human masters. The pigs, along with their ruthless leader, Napoleon, thus become the ruling class and the decision makers of the farm. It is a story of a revolution betrayed by its own leaders.

Director Rolando Macrini has created a new sound language that reveals the intimate identity of the animals, a sort of ESP for horses, chickens, sheep, donkeys and pigs. There is also, in his words, an “intense conception of space and rhythm” that simulates the fields, farm, and the windmill. The result is a tribute to the author’s genius and a bold experiment in translating prose into a theatrical form of art.