Synopsis

The president of the International Monetary Fund, Frederic Jean-Paul, is arrested and kept in an anonymous New York police station: he’s accused of sexual violence inflicted on a waitress. His two bizarre jailers, Donald and Frank, have been ordered to guard the prisoner until the following morning, when he will be brought to a safer location. However, things don’t go as planned: Jean-Paul shows signs of an inexplicable anxiety; Barbara, Jean-Paul’s wife, and Marcel Labiche, his lawyer and secretary of the French Socialist Party, soon break into the police station. Moreover, the two jailers seem to embody something more terrible than two simple guards. Elements of a bigger affair emerge during this night, an affair that does not simply concern violence between individuals, but also among nations, political subjects, and groups of power.

Inspired by well-known international news, The Great Walk tries a “cotemporary” recycling of conventional dramatic traditions linked to tragedy: faithful to the dictates of the Aristotelian unities of time and place, it’s composed in the regular verses of the Italian metrics (hendecasyllabic, sectarian).

ABOUT THE Author:

Fabrizio Sinisi was born in Barletta in 1987. Playwright, poet, and translator, in 2012 he debuted as a theater author with “La grande passeggiata” for Federico Tiezzi’s direction and Sandro Lombardi’s acting. As for poetry, he published “La fame” and “Contrasto dell’uomo e della donna”, which were presented during the XXVII edition of the Salone internazionale del Libro di Torino, and for which he was mentioned in the 2015 Carducci Prize.
In 2016, his “Natura morta con attori” debuted at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, while his “Agamennone” was part of the season at the Teatro Stabile in Turin; in 2016 his “Cabaret D’Annunzio” debuted at the National Croatian Theater in Rijeka. In 2017, his “La valigia di Ravel” was produced the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, making Sinisi the youngest author represented during the course of the prestigious Tuscan event.
His texts have already obtained the nominations for the most important dramaturgical awards in Italy, among which the Riccione Tondelli Prize, the Platea Prize, and the Testori Prize.
In 2010, at  just 20 years old, he became dramaturg of the Compagnia Lombardi-Tiezzi in Florence and of the Teatro Laboratorio della Toscana, as well as professor of Dramaturgy at the Scuola di Scrittura Flannery O’Connor in Milan.
During the three-year period of 2018-2020 he is resident dramaturg at the Centro Teatrale Bresciano. For years, he has been collaborating with the main directors of Italian theater. His works have been staged in Croatia, France, Great Britain, Greece, Romania and Switzerland.

About the Translator:

Thomas Simpson