La Merda: On what you might need to do to be permitted to sit at the 'winners' table'. In conversation with Cristian Ceresoli and Silvia Gallerano.

In their work La Merda (2012) – celebrating more than ten years of life on stages all over the world – Cristian Ceresoli and Silvia Gallerano engage in a harsh criticism of contemporary societal prospect, channeled through a stream of consciousness of a woman in a desperate need for ephemeral success and recognition. Ready to do whatever it takes to guarantee herself a place next to the important ones, at the table of the most resistant, the protagonist of this performance recounts her struggle with the demands of the world she inhabits, of the world of spectacle she aspires to belong to; her monologue pauses on a profound dissatisfaction with oneself, with one's body, ruthlessly canceled in a sparagmos of many overbearing, opposing forces. In this desperate fight against an imposing, threatening image of hunger (depicted in the act of swallowing its prey), the women's Pantagruelian mouth is marked with the bright red lipstick: filled with salt, but also simultaneously inebriated, it refuses the food, to stuff it later inside compulsively, it is ready to release whatever, to receive whatever, even the excrement. Through a series of interviews with Ceresoli and Gallerano, elaborating on both artisanal and aesthetical aspects of their work, this article examines the premises which gave impulse to the creative process, the historical and personal context the artists had to confront with during their poetical reasoning, the audiences' feedback. Moreover, the article addresses dramaturgical choices and actorial specificities of La Merda. In a dialog with Rabelais' fantastical imagery, it offers a theoretical reading of the piece in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]