Date: 19 – 29 November 2025 (Tuesday)
Venue: Thy Lab, 135 Yu Chau Street, Hong Kong
Registration required, click here to register
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For the first time ever in Hong Kong, audiences will have the opportunity to experience the groundbreaking work of world-renowned Italian theater director Romeo Castellucci with a retrospective of his theatre performances. This retrospective is curated by Alberto Gerosa, with the support of Italian Cultural Institute Hong Kong.
Romeo Castellucci: The First Hong Kong Film Retrospective at Thy Lab Theatre will feature full on-screen presentations of some of the director’s most iconic and visceral works, offering a deep dive into his unique and challenging artistic vision. The retrospective will include screenings of the monumental series The Divine Comedy, the epic cycle Tragedia Endogonidia, and the hauntingly intimate performance Ma. The program is completed by the documentary Theatron, which offers a rare look into Castellucci’s creative process and philosophy.
Known for his intensely visual and enigmatic productions that challenge the boundaries of theater, Castellucci has earned international acclaim for his powerful, unsettling, and unforgettable works. His productions are often characterized by their striking imagery, profound conceptual depth, and their exploration of complex themes surrounding faith, history, myth, and the human condition.
This event is a must-see for anyone interested in contemporary avant-garde art. The screenings provide an invaluable opportunity to engage with the work of one of the most significant and influential figures in modern European theater.
Schedule
- Theatron
Date: 19 November 2025
Time: 19:30
Director: Giulio Boato
Synopsis:
A documentary that chronicles the career and creative philosophy of the renowned Italian theater director. The film combines extensive archival footage from rehearsals and international tours with interviews from a diverse group of collaborators, including Castellucci’s sister Claudia Castellucci and actor Willem Dafoe. Rather than simply presenting a chronological biography, the documentary delves into Castellucci’s complex artistic vision and explores the intrinsic connection between his work and human nature. It provides a thoughtful reflection on the deep roots of theater and the innovative ways Castellucci uses radical imagery and a “theatrical organism” to explore universal themes.
- The Divine Comedy
Inferno
Date: 19 November 2025
Time: 21:00
Purgatory
Date: 20 November 2025
Time: 19:30
Paradise
Date: 20 November 2025
Time: 21:30
Synopsis:
A radical and visceral reinterpretation that asks what Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso) could mean in the 21st century. Commissioned by the prestigious Festival of Avignon, where it premiered in 2008.
Inferno: A harrowing descent into suffering, this part was characterized by intense, unsettling imagery and a relentless onslaught of human bodies expressing pain and loss. It was not a narrative of specific sins, but a contemporary experience of dread and the loss of self, staged against the monumental architecture of the Palais des Papes.
Purgatorio: This section explored the “purgatory” of modern existence: the trap of routine, the repetition of daily life, and the banality of the familiar. The plot followed a normal bourgeois family’s life, which is brutally disrupted by a violent and indelible event, casting a shadow over their hyper-realistic daily world.
Paradiso: The final part of the trilogy created an environment of “reversed exclusion,” where the audience was condemned to wander in a faceless, purely lit, and incorporeal universe. Castellucci used blinding light, sound (specifically the sound of water), and reflections to create a sense of dissolution, of losing one’s substance in the glory of creation.
- Ma
Date: 21 November 2025
Time: 19:30
*There will be the Q&A session and Masterclass after the screening
Synopsis:
Asite-specific “walking performance” that took place at the ancient archaeological site of Eleusis in 2023. The work reinterprets the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries, a secret initiation ritual, for a contemporary audience. In the ancient mysteries, entry was forbidden to matricides and barbarians (non-Greeks). Castellucci inverts this exclusion by making his central character a matricide and a “barbarian,” who traverses the sacred grounds after serving his sentence. The performance explores themes of forgiveness, reconciliation, sacrilege, and the reactivation of the sacred.
The title itself is multivalent: It could reference “ma,” the child’s word for “mother,” and the ancient reverence for Demeter, the “mother earth” goddess associated with the mysteries. It could also refer to the Latin root matrix, for “womb” or “mould,” linking birth and death. It may even hint at the Italian word “ma,” meaning “but,” to signal an overturning or new possibility.
The work features a solemn procession of female bodies, live singing, and a profound contrast between the ancient ruins and the modern man. It uses the silence and broad daylight of the location to create a powerful, ritualistic experience.
- Tragedia Endogonidia
Date: 29 November 2025
Time: 14:30
Synopsis:
Tragedia Endogonidia was an eleven-episode, traveling theatrical cycle directed by Romeo Castellucci, which was produced between 2002 and 2004. The work is known for its intense and unsettling imagery rather than a conventional narrative. The title refers to “endogonidial” fungal spores that reproduce through division and are immortal, creating a sharp contrast with the very notion of tragedy, which traditionally involves a hero’s death.
The cycle featured 11 episodes performed in 10 different European cities, starting and concluding in the company’s hometown Cesena (Italy). The other cities are: Avignon (France), Berlin (Germany), Brussels (Belgium), Bergen (Norway), Paris (France), Rome (Italy), Strasbourg (France), London (United Kingdom), Marseille (France)
Romeo Castellucci (Italy, 1960)
Italian theater director, artist, and designer known for his visually stunning and often shocking avant-garde performances. His work frequently subverts the primacy of language, opting for a powerful synthesis of visual art, sound, and a physical style of dramaturgy. After being an associate artist at the Festival d’Avignon in 2008, where he premiered his monumental trilogy, La Divina Commedia, in 2013 he received The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale. He has recently directed Richard Wagner’s Parsifal and The Ring of the Nibelung cycle at La Monnaie in Brussels, and earned the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture.
