Un amor de monja (‘A nun’s love’)

A twenty-three-year-old imprisoned woman in her role as a cloistered nun faces a path that, through reconsidering her own life, leads her to self-awareness. A story in stages, that of Rebecca, in which the protagonist goes from an almost total obscurity of consciousness, where she is assailed by the memories of a tormented past in which she rediscovers herself as a victim of the constraints of the soul, to the emergence of doubt and finally the vision of the light at the end of the tunnel. That same light towards which he will decide to go and with which he will finally be invested at the end of the story. A light much more longed for because it is full of shadows and fears. Rebecca’s words are like epiphanies that reveal her true intentions at the very moment she utters them: the past conditioned by the abandonment of the men in her life determines the choice to trust the only male entity incapable of abandoning. The wonder towards nature and the encounter with Ismael, a wandering soul in search of his lost way in a temporal space that repeats without stop, open the way to the outside world and allow him to free himself from the chain that ties to the women of his family. Rebecca moves between the objects of a poor scene, a mirror of her isolation, in which she strips herself of her past, recognizes it, frees herself from it and gives birth. The religiosity in which he initially takes refuge in order not to face his life, which at the same time is a way of atonement for his own sins for a meaningless life in the name of submission to the instincts of the soul, is transformed into spirituality by helping others rise from their own ashes.

The collaboration between Elisabetta Dettori and Massimiliano Fois was born with the creation of the monologue Un amore di suora (‘A nun’s love’), premiered in August 2022 and directed and performed by Elisabetta Dettori with original live music by Quirico Solinas. The monologue has already been performed eleven times in the original Italian version and twice in Alghero, with numerous praises from the public. In the month of July this year, it was performed in the integral version in Alguerez as part of “Una tarda al burg”, a theatrical day dedicated to Catalan-language theater in Alghero organized by the Cultural Works of Alguer. In May this year, it was staged at the headquarters of the historical association Ateneu Alguerès. Un amor de monja is the first monologue in the history of theater in Alghero. The monologue Un amore di suora / Un amor de monja has been published in a bilingual version by Edicions de l’Alguer in 2023. The Catalan version of Alguer is curated by Elisabetta Dettori, who is also the interpreter and director of the monologue, enriched with the original music by Quirico Solinas.