Winter Journey

Winter Journey

15 minutes before the beginning of the show i get a phone call, “the show is starting, come right now” so I leave everything and I go to the  Massimo Theater like lightning.

4th floor, stage place 23, the show has already begun! I sit down slowly, I am with a couple of about 60 years old. I enter in the opera!

A scenic effect that is not a normal opera for the  Massimo Theater, lights, sounds, emotions, orchestra, sea, scenery, people, video.

Winter Journey talks about the story of an African family that separates because the husband decides to come to Europe with the boat. That’s, the story of every day that we listen to in the background of our dinners.

Today there are 10 dead, today 100 … their death no longer has any effect on us, it is normal.

It is like during the time of the war, like the Jews  time, this is Hitler’s journey, men to concentration camps.

You think you get to your destination instead you suddenly find yourself at sea, with your dead friends, maybe even your son and luckily a boat passes and they save your life, a human being takes you by the hair and saves your life, Does it save your life? I do not know if the answer is “yes”, since the goal is a concentration camp in Europe, I correct a reception center.

In the reception centers there is nothing of what you dreamed, it is cold, the clothes are not adequate, there is no food, there are no documents … it is not the journey you expected.

In the meantime, it tells the story of a family, a love story, a woman who sings to her beloved during the nights, a man who sings his beloved when he has managed to be safe.

In Europe the night does not sleep, how strange an African thinks, I slept with the moon and lived with the sun.

When this man succeeds in contacting his woman by text message he would like to tell her that he is fine but in fact he is in a concentration camp and I do not want to tell this part, he hopes to put the documents in order and bring her too.

Feel the emotions in this work.

The migrants, we see them every day and hear the screams of the people, “my daughter is afraid of migrants, they look at her”, “with migrants we are no longer sure” and the harangues of politicians who say “there is no place for this people, let’s leave them at sea, we have too many migrants “.

I felt at times near Hitler, others near Salvini, at times I remembered my volunteer camp in Africa, I saw hope in the eyes of the Africans.

Coming to Europe, even an Australian boy wants to go to Italy, an American in China, a German in Madagascar, like all white men, blacks have hope in their eyes of wanting to travel, live the world.

There are some blacks who are not interested in coming to Europe, just as there are white people who are not interested in traveling.

Africans live the divine comedy on the contrary, paradise, purgatory and hell.

Many of them do not know what awaits them.

Most Africans can’t swim, imagine how dying they are about to die.

The delicacy of this work is in the real tears that descend on the cheeks of the protagonists, people who have experienced these experiences firsthand.

In this show I knew all blacks, I didn’t know any white.

I cried because it was so real as to provoke a question in me, why does man always repeat the same story? Why didn’t man get rid of the power of money?

At the end of the show I obviously find out who my traveling companions were, a Greek couple who speaks English, luckily the show was in English.

At the end of the show I obviously find out who my traveling companions were, I am a Greek couple who speaks English, luckily the show was in English.

I asked the gentleman if he liked the work, and he replied, “Yes, I got excited twice,one for the beauty of the work itself, the other because you were our traveling companion. She played all the time and even cried. ”

I congratulate Mr Badara Seck because during the time of the applause he took 2 roses that were on the stage and gave them to the 2 women who acted.

The African knows love, knows kindness, the African is not a person to be avoided.

The African has music inside him, joy, he goes to sleep when it is dark and he wakes up when there is the sun.

The problem of the African people is that it is so wonderful that it envies everyone and for this reason the world wants to destroy it. I’m sorry, I’m sorry for the mother earth that I met, I’m sorry for the mother earth in which I lived, I’m sorry for the eyes of all those children I left in Ampecrom.

I am happy, I am happy because in the staff of the work there is a man who works inside my company, John Frempong to whom my brother, a white man, has taught to play djembe.

I am happy because another black man who worked in my company for 7 years now is in Canada to realize his dreams.

I’m happy because Chris Obehi is fulfilling his dreams.

I am happy because in my small way I gave my contribution to my Africa.

I am sorry that the world does not know how to love, I am sorry that Hitler is not dead yet and I am sorry that in 2020 this mess still exists.

Evil should not be there, ignorance should not exist, economic power should not exist.

Why didn’t the world copy from the Africans? Their lifestyle … to let go!

The sound of drums in the streets and … let go, work the fields and … let go.

If you wear a t-shirt the other way around? It’s not a problem!

Certainly when Africa dresses for the party there is no Dolce and Gabbana that holds!

Once I went to the Teatro Massimo for the opening event of Manifesta and for the first time I saw whites and blacks inside the theater it was beautiful full of colors, laughter, emotions.

In the last 2 years I have only been to the Teatro Massimo twice to see works of my people, works of Africa, thanks Palermo and thanks to Ludovico Einaudi for choosing us.

Claudia Vitale