You Said It

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• Silvia Girardi
• Sappho
• Rainer Maria Rilke
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The digital age promotes communication. (We’re more connected than ever.) The digital age inhibits communication. (We form superficial relationships and hide behind virtual selves.) We love our smartphones. (We could not live without them.) We hate our smartphones. (We wish we could live without them.) Such are the paradoxes of the modern world, and All I Wanted to Say reflects on them in the most thorough of ways. It uses theater, dance, music, poetry, and film to comment on how technology influences what we say as well as how and when we say it. Director and performer Silvia Girardi describes it as an intentionally emotional, evocative “collage investigation” whose components include letters from famous people in history, bits from chatroom exchanges, status updates from Facebook, and tweets. It borrows from the likes of Rainer Maria Rilke, Bertolt Brecht, Sappho, and the Theatre of the Absurd. The performance itself tests the limits of digital communications: Girardi appears live in San Francisco. while Giuliano Pirotello appears via video feed from Italy. The two actors, representing male and female archetypes in multiple relationship scenarios, rehearsed this way, too. The work is perpetually in progress, changing with audience feedback delivered through social media channels. Some of the performance is improvised. It should come as no surprise to learn how Girardi raised money for the show: Kickstarter.
June 7-8, 7:30 p.m., 2011