Il teatro Andromeda di Lorenzo Reina, tra performance teatrali e installazioni site-specific

Lorenzo Reina (Agrigento, 1960) began the construction of the Andromeda Theatre in 1984 on the heights overlooking the village of Santo Stefano Quisquina in Sicily. The first construction phase involved the correct orientation of the future theatre, according to the east-west axis, as in the most ancient traditions related to the foundation of sacred buildings. In the first construction phase, the western slope of the hill, the one most open to the landscape towards infinity, was flattened to accommodate the stage space characterised by a small elliptical stage. On the opposite slope, the one to the east, were placed the 108 seats of the stalls, each formed by two parallelepiped blocks of Sabucina stone, placed one on top of the other, positioned to form the counter-projection on the ground of the stars of Andromeda constellation. In the same years, these first elements were surrounded by a drystone wall made of irregular stones, characterised by a number of openings oriented by the artist according to archaeo-astronomical principles linked to the two solstices. If the celestial alignments have remained unchanged over time, the same cannot be said of the complex's tectonic elements: starting from October 2022, Lorenzo Reina has decided to bury the archaic theatre in order to build its definitive version on top of it. The stage space has been enlarged and made circular, while the precarious dry-stone masonry enclosure has been replaced with cyclopean blocks of yellow-gold calcarenite from Sicily. In addition to tracing the theatre's evolution over time, the essay focuses on the analysis of a performance that took place there in 2022, Margherita Stazione 19 by and with Laura Ingiulla, by director Manuel Giliberti, and on the description of a site specific work by the artist Barbara Crowford, Mirror of the sky, installed on the stage of the Andromeda Theatre in 2023.