La polvere, il ferro e l’acqua del fiume
Stories of Young Partisans
Three young people, three choices, one land shaped by war. From the banks of the Adda River to the factories of Brianza and the roads traveled by Resistance couriers, water, iron, and dust become the voices of a memory that still speaks to our present.
This is not a commemoration, but an act of recognition: the young people of that time were made of the same flesh, carried the same doubts, and longed for a future just as young people do today.
The future is not a place we are going, but something we build each time we choose not to forget.
Information
Audience: Middle and High School Students and Adults
Estimated Running Time: 60 minutes
Credits
Performed by: Alice Bestetti, Luca Colombo, and Gloria Grilli
Written and Directed by: Mirko Rizzi
Production: LAG teatro
The Production
Three young lives cross the same landscape during the years of the Italian Resistance: Abbondio Martino, twenty, on the banks of the Adda River; Maria Varisco, nineteen, deported to Germany to work in the war industry; and a young Resistance courier traveling the roads of Brianza—a theatrical character inspired by the lives of Bambina Villa and Elisa Sala.
Water, iron, and dust are more than elements of the landscape: they become the substance of their stories, the boundary between fear and choice, fragility and courage.
Three actors, a handful of symbolic objects, and a soundscape weave together monologues and ensemble passages, bringing together onstage lives that the historical record kept apart.
Why This Production
The Italian Resistance risks becoming a distant term, confined to dates and commemorations. Yet it was also the work of young people barely in their twenties, with fears, desires, and doubts no different from those of young people today.
The production does not reconstruct history as a lesson; it brings it close through three lives and three choices. It shows the moment when injustice enters daily life and a personal decision becomes a responsibility toward others.
Recounting those choices today means questioning the present: recognizing when evil becomes ordinary and asking ourselves where we choose to stand.