Noise in the Waters (Rumore di acque)
A play-concert written by Marco Martinelli and performed by Alessandro Renda from Teatro delle Albe, with Enzo and Lorenzo Mancuso. Presented in Italian with English supertitles.
NJ Premiere Tuesday, February 18, 2014
7:00 – 9:00 PM
Montclair State University
Leshowitz Recital Hall, John J. Cali School of Music
Free and open to the public
See media coverage of this event
Introduction by Dr. Teresa Fiore (Inserra Chair)
Post-show round table with Marco Martinelli, Alessandro Renda, Enzo and Lorenzo Mancuso, and Dr. Marisa Trubiano (Italian Program, MSU)
- Organized by the Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies(Department of Spanish and Italian) at Montclair State University
- In collaboration with the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University
An intense monologue that transfigures into grotesque and melancholic poetry the tragic account of migrants adrift in the Mediterranean, Noise in the Waters develops through the figure of a demonic and sarcastic general – the inhabitant of a phantom islet between Europe and Africa – who evokes the spirits of the lost at sea. Midway between a sorcerous séance and a bureaucratic catalogue, the general’s monologue – delivered by Alessandro Renda – is accompanied by musicians Enzo and Lorenzo Mancuso who, with their powerful voices of ancient deities, seem to howl the pain of humanity from the depths of an abyss, the embodiment of an “oratorio for the sacrificed.”
“[…] The shocking everyday reality of overcrowded boats that sink and for which no one feels responsible is evoked with poetry and accusation like an ancient tragedy, and at the same time re-projected into the present through the reference to fortress Europe and its mechanisms of disregard and defense. Alessandro Renda’s Frontex Neptune is made ridiculous with a distorted, squeaky voice and tired, lordly gesticulations, accompanied by the archaic spirit song of the Mancuso Brothers, from which perhaps the souls of the dead emerge. Rumore di acque is a complex requiem that does not stop at simple “denunciation”, and it moves us for precisely this reason […]”. – Renate Klett, Theater der Zeit
Under the patronage of: 
About Alessandro Renda
Alessandro Renda was part of the Teatro delle Albe’s non-school as an adolescent and later joined as an actor in 1999. He has acted in a variety of plays since then (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, L’isola di Alcina, Baldus, La canzone degli F.P. e degli I.M., among others). In the past ten years he has served as student workshop leader as well as videographer of the Albe activities. He is currently working on the three-part video Mazara-Ravenna 2010 on the residency in Sicily for the production of Cercatori di tracce, with the participation of Italian and Tunisian adolescents, later turned into the core experience for the development of the show Noise in the Waters, of which Renda is the sole actor.