Sophie Vitelli: Be Water My Friend

"In search of a little intimacy and someone to share it with, we move from one room to the other. Not always are they familiar, singular or human places and people; more often than so we take a leap into the unknown, leaving a piece of ourselves behind, in order to communicate with the idealised, transfigured, virtual being we have found.

Be Water My Friend creates a room dedicated to the everyday act of texting and chatting, elevating it to a spectacular event on our desire for discovery."

Be Water My Friend is a performance co-produced by Theatre de l’Usine de Genève and Le fond d’Art Contemporaine de la Ville de Genève in 2016, and created by CM Gratitude, Sophie Vitelli and Frida Giulia Franceschini. An interactive musical performance lasting 35/40 minutes, where the audience is invited to become an active part of the dramaturgy by interacting with the performer on stage. Throughout the show, the performer (embodying a hybrid character, a mythical creature with the traits of a mermaid, a clown, an ordinary girl, but also whatever the audience wishes to see) sits on a pedestal, with a glass of water and a smartphone, for what seems like eternity. The audience, provided with a business card on entering the space, is invited to write to/contact the performer via WhatsApp.

Meanwhile a band in the background (in the formation of Sophie Vitelli, Francesco Giovannetti and Davide Stampini) improvises around a recurring musical theme, a ballad from a distant dream world, in a concert that makes a spectacle out of the everyday act of texting.