Valentina Medda: THE LAST LAMENTATION

music performance
(Italy, Slovenia)

The Last Lamentation explores traditional Mediterranean mourning practices with strong presence of the vocal element. Whilst Sardinian songs and mourning rituals provided the initial framework of inquiry, the project expanded into a wider Mediterranean space, embedded with suspense, waiting and passing as experiential themes for many migrations and diasporas. Creative practises were informed by proximity of the sea as the space of reception and deposition of bodies, but also as an entity inscribed in the lives of people and their passing. The lamenting voices in Ljubljana will melt with the river as the background water entity. The dark presence of women will pierce through the horizon as the soundscape weaves together abstract mourning and sounds from the environment.

One of the key features of Valentina Medda’s creative practice, which originally stems from visual arts, is its propensity to form links with the local environment, the latter representing either living agents, inorganic nature or mere objects. Medda’s poetics delves into female experiences, their knowledge and practices of nurture and care.
The Last Lamentation was created in co-production of Sardegna Teatro, L’Arboreto – Teatro Dimora residence centre and Bunker, as part of the network Stronger Peripheries: A Southern Coalition.

20 minutes

Direction: Valentina Medda
Physical score: Valentina Medda
Dramaturg: Maria Paola Zedda
Performers: Špela Adam, Nataša Bojanić, Ksenija Brandstätter, Mojca Cej, Alenka Dereani, Romana Humar, Marja Kovanda, Majda Lekše, Špela Majcen, Maja Modrijan, Paulina Pia Rogač, Liza Šimenc, Vesna Škreblin, Lenka Trdina, Manuela Manca, Carla Orrù, Lucia Paulis
Vocal trainer: Claudia Ciceroni
Music: Claudia Ciceroni and Alessandro Olla
Costumes: Filippo Grandulli
Costume realization: La Matrioska – laboratorio tessile creativo e sociale
Sound technitian: Jure Vlahovič
Technical support: Martin Lovšin, Grega Mohorčič
Local producer: Špela Kopitar
Co-production: Sardegna Teatro, Bunker, Ljubljana, L’Arboreto – Teatro Dimora
Supported by: Evropska unija – program Ustvarjalna Evropa: Kultura, Stronger Peripheries: A Southern Coalition, Italian Council (2022), Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea, Ministero della Cultura, Ministrstvo za kulture RS, Mestna občina Ljubljana

Photo by: Laura Farneti