A long time ago, aboy had a dream that he couldn't wake up from. He dreamt that all the world sang and loved, flora and fauna and the sun and death. He dreamt that Man no longer exploited Man because he was brother and sister; he dreamt that he had to abandon riches because they were only a dazzling show and that he was to live in poverty. He went out in the streets to sing the new madness and, little by little, thousands joined him. The force of his singing convinced popes and sultans, warriors and merchants; he died, naked, embracing the naked sister earth.

The image of Francesco came to us in the terrible days of the war in Bosnia, when we wanted to portray in the streets the horror that was taking place right in front of our very eyes. The research done by Henry Throde and Chiara Frugoni helped us understand the real story of a character who was hastily captured in the realms of symbol and myth, rendering his account inoffensive and his proportions gigantic, perhaps too big for us, little, men. Our civilisation reads the dream of Francesco like an illness: perhaps this is the real illness.

WHAT THE INTERNATIONAL PAPERS SAY

...an ambitious performance, the Francesco of the Teatro Nucleo company. It functions on the actions of the actors, on the expressiveness of bodies and stage movements. An interesting theatrical gamble: Saint Francis of Assisi reborn in a universe of silence......the magnificent choreography and the perfect beauty of these moments overcome ordinary understanding, something the spectator can do without: this theatre acts on the emotions and sensitivities.
La Montagne, Aurillac (F)

...suggestive body language and costumes full of fantasy, with modern associative elements, have given a new face to the legend of the Saint...
Westfälische Rundschau, Hagen (D)

...the intensity of the representation is so strong that the audience is fascinated by the impressions, the emotional tensions, the dramatic composition made up of very short scenes with a metaphor of the universal character shining through from each one. A revelation...
Zycie Warszawa, Varsavia (PL)

...another, very important, attempt by Nucleo to reflect on history, on human existence, on the relationship between Man and God and Man and the other Man....
Gazeta Wyborcza, Poznan (PL)