Daemon is a hallucination born from the mind of young Mary Shelley/Alexia Sarantopoulou, who daydreams, builds “castles in the air,” and possesses a monstrous imagination. We’ve portrayed her wandering through woods and fog when suddenly she sees this strange creature moving swiftly, appearing and disappearing, dancing in an imaginary rave, screaming in rage and terror… She converses with it. Are these hallucinations due to the damp weather and incessant rain of that “year without a summer”? Or images conjured by the reflections in the water?

Daemon is also a prelude to the second (filmic) movement, Frankenstein (A History of Hate), which will debut in autumn 2025 at RomaEuropa. It tells of that terrible click that turns love into hate, benevolence into violence—that glitch in the mechanics of love that triggers an irreversible reversal. It focuses on the creature’s “becoming evil”: how a being without identity, without history, as lonely as a hunted deer, creates its own world and rebels, setting fire to the house. Fire—a recurring theme in this Promethean novel—invites us to recognize the transformative and insurgent value of rage as the first gesture/mode of reaction against an anthropocentric system that crushes all non-conforming positions. And in this new, tragic Trumpian era, the dissenting voices of those pushed to the margins become even more necessary. We express this with the words of Susan Stryker (author and gender studies theorist) from My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage, which conclude the performance:

In this place without language
My rage is a silent raving.

Bio 

Motus, a theater company founded in Rimini in 1991 by Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò, explores the contradictions of the present through performances, shows, and installations. Active across Europe and the world, the directors curated the 50th anniversary of the Santarcangelo Festival(2020-2021) and, since 2023, Supernova, a performing arts festival in Rimini. In 2021, they won the Critics’ Award from the National Association of Theater Critics, and in 2024, the Italian Council Award with the project [ÒDIO]. In 2025, they will inaugurate Future in the Past, an exhibition dedicated to their archive, and Casa MOTUS, a cultural center in San Giovanni in Marignano, thanks to the PNRR funding.

Credits

With Enrico Casagrande and Alexia Sarantopoulou

Direction and dramaturgy by Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande

Lights and video by Daniela Nicolò, in collaboration with Eduard Popescu

Sound by Martina Ciavatta

A production by Motus in collaboration with Rimi/Imir-Scenkunst, Norway

With the support of BASSO PROFILO as part of the SUPPORT STRUCTURES project, realized with the contribution of the Municipality of Ferrara and MIC.

Duration

45′

Language/Subtitles

Italian with English subtitles

Tickets

Reserve your ticket

€ 15,00
€ 12,00 REDUCED – Under 26 / Trenitalia Tper*

(*reduced rate reserved for Trenitalia Tper customers: Unica Smart Card holders, annual or monthly subscribers, one-way ticket holders to reach Rimini during the days of the event).