Text and direction: Giacomo Garaffoni
Production: ERT Emilia Romagna Theater Foundation
With: Alice Torriani and Livia Rossi

On September 1, 1992, outside the convent of the Capuchin Friars of Cesena, a small town in north-east Italy, the young girl Cristina Golinucci disappeared without leaving a trace.
With I just want the bones, the author and director Giacomo Garaffoni brings to the stage a contemporary tragedy, a short circuit between memory and pain, between theater, visual arts and literature. A moved and poetic attempt to overcome and shatter the violence in the public storytelling of facts.

I just want the bones it’s a play, a contemporary tragedy: an artistic, tragic and visceral gesture. An attempt to tear apart the chronicle with which our time filters every event, often removing every possible emotional form. This work searches through the folds of the domestic life of each of us and probes the terrible inability, all human, to accept mourning and build a relationship with what we have lost.

Cristina Golinucci has been missing for 30 years, a time well beyond that of her life in the presence. The day she stopped being herself, she became forever. A photo in all the stations of Italy, a diary made up of pages chosen by someone else, the same glasses, the same cardigan, the same brooch, the same smile. Forever.
The emotional landscape that we are all witnesses begins where a story ends, to become only memory. The concept of loss has changed, to the point of becoming an image and testimony of the mere occurrence of missing. What remains of Cristina today? What questions does such a profound and unfathomable absence pose to us? What shape does the life of those who remain staring at that void take?

Judgment, condemnation, mercy and forgiveness are out of this work. Ours is an assault on the museum of memory. A work that wants to become a sounding board, a look at the fall that awaits us beyond the side of the road and at the removal of an assaulted and broken feminine. A defense of the fragile tenderness that exists in the act of remembering.

written and directed by Giacomo Garaffoni
with Livia Rossi and Alice Torriani
scenography Sofia Rossi
light design Uria Comandini
sound design Massimo Nardinocchi
assistant director Virginia Landi
stage videos and photos Piero Tampellini and Francesco Girardi – Studio Kiwi
special thanks to Enzo Vetrano for the recorded vocal intervention

technical director Massimo Gianaroli
stage manager and chief stagehand Stefano Cortesi
chief electrician Uria Comandini
sound engineer Massimo Nardinocchi
Seamstress Michela Rossi
scenes built in the ERT National Theatre Laboratory
manager and chief builder Gioacchino Gramolini
decorator scenographers Ludovica Sitti (head), Sara Menichini, Benedetta Monetti
statue made by Scaramella Sculpture Studio

thanks to Penelope Onlus Association Italy, Penelope Onlus Emilia Romagna Association in particular Marisa Degli Angeli and family, the Lawyer Ilaria Abbondanza, We Reading
Aps, Indocile Aps and Fiat 500 Club Italia – coordination of Cesena.

production Emilia Romagna ERT Theatre/National Theatre