There comes a point in the middle of Made in ILVA where you feel as if you might be going mad yourself. Hallucinating the fact that performer Nicola Pianzola keeps repeating over and over “the brutalisation” while hammering the steel set with his palms (which are surely by now raw). Delirious with the metal rhythms […]Continue reading "Review By Lucy Ribchester for Festmag"

[…] In the Taranto 30% of the population have lung tumors while the factory is still thriving financially. Therefore the piece voices anti-capitalist views highlighting how society accepts to sweep issues like these under the carpet or under a pile of ever-growing dead bodies. Through repetitive mechanical movements Pianzola puts his body through pure exhaustion […]Continue reading "Review by Katie Mitchell for The Public reviews"

Inspired by the controversial ILVA steelworks in Taranto, Italy, Made in ILVA – The Contemporary Hermit, is more than a simple lesson in politics. In fact, it spins a wider tale of a dystopian present where the man-made is replacing nature; as we are told in the disembodied opening monologue, clouds are being created and […]Continue reading "Review by Rachael Murray for The Student Newspaper"

All theatre is physical, but some theatre is more physical […], [just like] this writhing, sweaty, angry solo performance by Nicola Pianzola of the Instabili Vaganti theatre company […]. […]the performance deals less in facts and figures than in imagery and gesture. On a carefully lit, very small acting area, Pianzola rocks back and forth […]Continue reading "Review by Michael Coveney for What’s on Stage"

THE title of this solo show used to be the proud slogan for a huge steel plant in Southern Italy. But as Nicola Pianzola puts his own body through the mill of an unrelentingly physical performance, he voices the appalling human cost of production there: injuries, illnesses, even deaths. […] A metal frame which started […]Continue reading "Review for The Herald"

[…] Made in ILVA comes laden with prizes and anchored by a performance of punitive intensity by Nicola Pinzola. Subtitled The Contemporary Heremit, the piece was inspired by truly scandalous conditions at an Italian steelworks. The impressively wiry Pinzola is both the embodiment of these real-life horrors and their brutally poetic mouthpiece. Instabili Vaganti’s production […]Continue reading "Review by Donald Hutera for The Times"

Work, work, work. Never stopping, fighting to meet the productivity deadlines… That’s all there is – that and a fitful night’s sleep, dreaming terrible dreams, until it is time to get up and get back on the treadmill. That is the sum of a working man’s life. Surrounded on three sides by audience, a lone […]Continue reading "Review by Drothy Max Prior for Total Theatre"

The stark black and white image of a bleak and empty factory space is projected on to a square on the stage with the metal pillars that hold the stage lighting managing to look part of the scene. When lights dimly appear, performer Nicola Pianzola emerges from the dark as a faceless hooded figure whose […]Continue reading "Review by Irene Brown for EdimburghGuide"

When one man can command the intensity of the theatrical experience just by flexing his sinewey muscles, we must find ourselves at the Parnassian peak of physical theater. Nicola Pianzola, of the experimental Instabili Vaganti company of Bologna, is just that man, & his hour of incantation-like speech & gymanastic movements is nothing but a […]Continue reading "Review by Damo Bullen for Mumble Theatre"