text Luca Doninelli
on stage Ermanna Montanari
music Luigi Ceccarelli
sound design Marco Olivieri
lighting design Francesco Catacchio
technical direction Fagio
space and costumes assistant Roberto Magnani
consultancy and arabic translation of the text Tahar Lamri
on video Khadija Assoulaimani
video editing Alessandro Renda
voice and percussions Marzouk Mejri
music recorded at Edisonstudio Roma
idea, space, costumes and direction Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari
production Teatro delle Albe/Ravenna Teatro in collaboration with Teatro de gli Incamminati/deSidera
thanks to Luisa Orelli for the precious suggestions about Koranic spirituality, Yiad Hafez for the consultancy on arabic music, E production, Gerardo Lamattina
Maryam tells us how much the figure of Maryam, Mary the Mother of Christ, is central to the Koran and to Islamic culture. In times of terrorism and ferocity, Maryam stands as the “woman of meeting”, a bridge between Christianity, Islam and contemporary culture.
Ermanna Montanari gives voice to three Palestinian women who share with Mary the pain of a child’s death, all dead through the injustice and horrors of the world. Mothers who turn to her for consolation, or to shout their own rage, to claim revenge or simply to invoke an answer to the “why” of war and violence. They invoke her as they do in many Islamic sanctuaries in the Middle East and the Maghreb. In the end it is Maryam herself who appears and, mother of mothers, shares these women’s pain.
With this show the Albe return to collaborate with writer Luca Doninelli (Finalist, Campiello Prize 2016), about ten years after The Hand. And they continue along the avenue of experimentation with the marriage of Montanari’s kaleidoscopic voice and Luigi Ceccarelli’s powerful music which has just yielded the extraordinary Lus, a concerto in Romagnol dialect from a text by Nevio Spadoni, acclaimed by critics in Italy and abroad.
“The idea for Maryam comes from far away,” writes Luca Doninelli, “to be precise from the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth which I visited between 2005 and 2006. There I witnessed the spectacle of an almost uninterrupted line of Muslim women who entered the church to pay homage to the Madonna. I already knew about Muslims’ devotion to Mary but what I saw struck me all the same by its solemnity, the trusting certainty that these women transmitted. I carried it within me for years until it sprang back to mind when I wanted to write a theatre piece on Mary. I’m very grateful to Ermanna and Marco, not only for the decisive help they gave me with the script but also for various suggestions about things to read. Thanks to Marco and Ermanna, I was able to grasp how a piece of writing can be ‘personal’ without necessarily being ‘solitary.’ ”