I demoni. Un frammento
freely extracted from I demoni di Fëdor Dostoevskij
text and stage direction of the play reading Domenico Ingenito
with Domenico Ingenito, Michele Eburnea
costume consulation Anna Verde
sound and music dramaturgy Giulio Nocera

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Dostoevsky’s The Demons, published between 1871 and 1872, was written as an immediate reaction to a news story: in November 1869, in Moscow, members of a terrorist cell had murdered one of their own, suspected of treason. Dostoevsky intended to write a novel-pamphlet about it, caricaturing the new generation of nihilists, but also denouncing the irresponsible “fathers” with whom he himself had sympathized before his arrest and sentence to hard labor.
But over time, the satirical pamphlet became a prophetic novel of ideas and a profound reflection on the search for God and Evil. Domenico Ingenito reinterprets and revisits the novel, focusing on the struggle between the different generations; those revolutionaries who dreamed of a different Russia become the radical thinkers of contemporary revolutions, and Dostoevsky’s nineteenth century feels closer to our own.