“Wherever I am, I am what is missing”. For a tragedy of absence between Tacitus and Anagoor

Abstract

Is it possible to construct a work of art on absence? Anagoor’s performance on the battle of  Teutoburg Forest succeeds. Absence builds performance’s modes of expression, without any help of objects or scenography. Absence determines the theme, the legions disappeared in the deadly ambush of the Battle. Other voices able to express the absence’s strength take turns during the performance: poetic voices able to create a personal dialogue with the dead , the ancestors, who are par excellence absent, grafted on Tacitus’ text to create many nuances of absence. Absence is mourning, sadness for differences, for insurmountable boundaries. But also absence as hope, because art is able to learn to speak any silence.