Ragazzi di Vita

RAGAZZI DI VITA

by Pier Paolo Pasolini

drama Emanuele Trevi

theatre director Massimo Popolizio

with Lino Guanciale and Sonia Barbadoro, Giampiero Cicciò, Roberta Crivelli, Flavio Francucci, Francesco Giordano, Lorenzo Grilli, Michele Lisi, Pietro Masotti, Paolo Minnielli, Alberto Onofrietti, Lorenzo Parrotto, Cristina Pelliccia, Silvia Pernarella, Elena Polic Greco, Francesco Santagada, Stefano Scialanga, Josafat Vagni, Andrea Volpetti

Production Teatro di Roma – Teatro Nazionale

Pasolini's novel tells the story of Riccetto, a street urchin to whom the audience is first introduced during his Confirmation and First Communion. Not too long afterwards, Riccetto is stealing from a blind beggar and a convent. Over the next few years, the reader follows along with Riccetto as he goes from robbery to scam to prostituting himself and back again while drifting around. During this time, many of his companions are killed or die off and there is constant immorality at hand. He is finally arrested and put in jail after trying to steal some iron in order to buy his fiancée an engagement ring. He is released afterwards and goes back to his same street life. Pasolini makes it clear to the reader that Riccetto and his peers are wanderers by nature, they have no life plans or goals and don't care to; Riccetto is a more deviant Dean Moriarty of sorts. This is the way in which Pasolini finds this subclass of people to be free from modernity and rooted in a way of life that has since been lost.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragazzi_di_vita 

This theatrical adaption by Emanuele Trevi and Massimo Popolizio puts on stage a wide repertoire of characters, 18 boys, and juxtaposes unscrupulousness and modesty, violence and goodness, brutality and sweetness, but also irony and fun. The sets change continuously, and the "narrator" roams the stage like a "stranger" to make all the scenes visible to the public, animated by the feverish attempt to reconstruct some pieces of history.