Il cartografo is a stage execution, show-catalogue by Roberto Paci Dalò. In a theatre that is a meeting point between the world seen and the world depicted, on stage there is a reflection on cartography and the representation of the world. Methodologies, stories and places come to life through media dramaturgy: live video mixing, multi-channel sound diffusion.

Il cartografo brings on stage images, sounds and narrations collected and re-proposed in the original languages of the North Adriatic: voices of friends and strangers recorded during journeys along the coast and inland areas, fragments from the kaleidoscope of languages and dialects of small towns and historically important cities such as Venice and Trieste. The sound and human geography then creates the acoustic forest that acts as a platform for the show and here, interwoven with these voices, appears Predrag Matvejevic”s voice-over that reads some fragments from his work Mediterraneo, in whose spirit the collection of voices was made.

On stage

On stage, the voice and presence of Isabella Bordoni – also author of the lyrical text that is the main theme of the show – and Alessandro Culiani on cello.
The performers sit around a table that changes during the performance and which acts as a support, projection painting, hut-canopy. The evocation is that of a classic seventeenth-century representation where the elements of profession and travel, instruments of orientation and measurement, letters, appear.
The music moves between modernity and archaicism: the voices alone alternate with the choirs, and the live cello plays with the sound and performance practice of the bass viol.