The Butterfly Trial

the musical

THE BUTTERFLY TRIAL

matilde politi

on freedom and self determination

sex and joy

judgement and guilt

truth

stigma

conviction and blame

deception

therapy and treatment


“I didn’t know that freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne. Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties designed to make you lick your chops. Oh, no! It’s a chore, on the contrary, and a long-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting. No champagne, no friends raising their glasses as they look at you affectionately. Alone in a forbidding room, alone in the prisoner’s bog before the judges, and alone to decide in face of oneself or in the face of others’ judgment. At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that’s why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you’re down with a fever, or are distressed, or love nobody.” (A.Camus, The Fall)

 


Freedom is condamned in this world as an obscene act.

To be acted in private. To be judged publicly.

First of all, sexual freedom, condamned by morality coming from all monotheistic religions.

Becouse sexual pleasure, that is joy, is the only free source of power: you cannot steal it, you cannot accumulate it, you cannote capitalize it. Sexual pleasure is popular, universal, revolutionary, and it menace those holding the power and the privilege and the control.

The Butterfly, female sexual pleasure, is killed everyday, in order to maintain the system.

Then, it's a matter of choice.

Freedom to choose to live free, or slowly die as a slave without your power to be happy, to be gay.


Presumption of guilt, instead of presumption of innocence: the butterfly is under judgement in the courtroom, becouse of her self determined choice in her sexual life, becouse of her freedom. They call her slut, the jury, the public prosecutor, and she has to pay for this. She likes to be a slut, she chose.

Then she does not care, in front of the Judge she is dancing and singing and laughing, together with all the other accused, those who chose their way, migrants, sex workers, free lovers, trans and gay, addicted of any sort, willing to die softly, suiciding themself through love instead of killing others with blame and stigma. Those who chose freedom every day.


They will be condamned, while they are already dead.

You will not know if we are in the netherworld, waiting for the Last Judgement, or in a law court, waiting for the social and human verdict, or inside our conscience, waiting for our personal condemnation.

 


THE MUSICAL:

the script uses different languages, italian, english, french, spanish, greek, dialects.

The lyric languages follow the style of the music, which is always danceable, and split from one cultural tradition to another, such as South Italian traditions, South American cumbia, Western African mandingue tradition, greek zeibekiko, North American blues and pop, and so on.

The dances follow the music, with its splitting, then also dance is always joy, as it is often some translation of sexual initiation