Two women with dark plaits in a white dreamlandscape of half-transparent curtains. This is the stage image for Poco lontano da qui (Not far from here). The basic ingredients of the performance are dialogue and meeting. There is, of course, the meeting between Chiara Guidi and Ermanna Montanari themselves : two of the most prominent Italian theatre makers share the stage for the first time. But there is more than this personal experience. A key passage is a letter which Marxist militant Rosa Luxemburg wrote from prison She laments the fate of a buffalo that is beaten and tortured in the courtyard. In its eyes she reads the pain of a wounded world. Guidi reads the letter to us, softly, in a fragile voice. There is an answer. Another letter : venomous, sharp, written by a reader who argues that Rosa Luxemburg richly deserved her prison sentence. Both voices finally come together in a call for a new world, for compassion. The voices of the actresses now intertwine, then again push each other away. The estranging atmosphere is strengthened by the sound mix of composer Giuseppe Ielasi. “The hate that contaminates us and the war that penetrates into us become a nocturnal fairy tale, told by a voice that quivers with fear - but with the hope to be saved by a fairy called ‘Compassion’. (...) Instant magic.” (Corriere della Sera).