LOS(v)ERS

A project that seeks to address Hikikomori syndrome through a performance freely inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

LOSERS Hikikomori, a Japanese term meaning “to stay apart,” is used to describe those who choose to withdraw from social life for long periods of time. Hikikomori primarily manifests during adolescence, and at the root of this condition lies a difficulty in adapting: those affected experience severe social anxiety and struggle to relate to their peers, to the point of hating their own existence, trapped in a vicious cycle. At first, they stop going out because of social anxiety, but this is later compounded by anxiety over lost time, accompanied by the feeling that there is nothing they can do to repair a life they now perceive as compromised, leading them to see themselves as losers.

LOVERS Romeo and Juliet, written between 1594 and 1596, is one of William Shakespeare’s best-known works. It tells the story of two feuding families in Verona, the Montagues and the Capulets, but above all it tells the love story of two young people from these families, Romeo and Juliet—a story destined to end tragically with the death of the two lovers. The story of Romeo and Juliet is perhaps, more than any other, one that embodies the concept of pure and absolute love, beyond all boundaries and prejudice.

LOS(v)ERS Choreographer Roberto Tedesco says: “I asked myself: if, in Shakespeare’s story, it is the families who stand in the way of the two lovers’ love, what might the obstacle be in my version of Romeo and Juliet? I answer this question with a stage image: two rooms, one white and one black, belonging respectively to Romeo and Juliet. Separating the two rooms is a wall, a kind of partition that prevents either of them from entering the other’s space.

The image of these small spaces—containers of lives, but also shelters and barriers to relationships—brings Hikikomori syndrome to mind. What if my Romeo and Juliet were two young people who, living with this condition, withdraw from society and, confined to their own rooms, meet and fall in love online? What if it were their own fears that kept them apart?

To bring the story even closer to the present day, I think about how much of our private lives is now exposed for everyone to see through social media. This leads me to imagine a third character, whose task is to document the lives of the two protagonists through photographs and short videos, while at the same time taking on the role of the shadow—a symbol of the unconscious, an unknown force manipulating our actions.”