Societas Raffaello Sanzio. Photos by Francesco Raffaelli

CHICAGO.- The visual effects are as breathtaking as the story is intense in the darkly poetic dreamscapes of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’s Hey Girl! Meant to fascinate and provoke the imagination, this most recent project by the radical Italian theater company creates a world that is both beautiful and horrific. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago, presents Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Hey Girl!, Friday-Saturday, January 18-19, 2008.

Hey Girl! is an intense symbolic work that follows a girl’s evolution from birth through the brutality of adolescence to the sexual independence and power of womanhood. In the opening scene, set on a foggy stage with moody lighting, the story’s heroine sheds a liquid silicon cocoon. The goo drips to the floor as the young woman’s naked form emerges. The central character, played by two actresses, is torn between the roles of Joan of Arc and Juliet – on the one hand driven to fight for her freedom and on the other being bound by the constraints that history and culture attach to the female role. (courtesy www.artdaily.org)