La misteriosa scomparsa di W | Teatro Duse

La misteriosa scomparsa di W, the play by Stefano Benni, returns to the stage Friday 25 and Saturday 26 September 2026 at Teatro Duse in Bologna.

Ambra Angiolini makes her directorial debut with a work she describes as real and deeply contemporary in its “human” concerns, using a theatrical form that over the years has allowed her to grow and mature through increasingly refined artistic choices.

Angiolini describes it as a “group soliloquy”: tragicomic, funny and bitter, bright and dark, reflecting the enormous contradiction that is everyone's life. Through Benni's literary virtuosity, Ambra also explores the fragments of her own past, trying to piece them back together, recover what is missing and reclaim her V-shaped piece of W.

“W” will once again become a whole woman: wonderfully unconventional, strong within the cracks of her fragility, rebuilding her body and humanity before the audience in a world that appears too cynical and increasingly devoid of human aspirations.

One morning W wakes up and no longer feels “right”: many things no longer make sense to her. None of the promises made to her as a child have been kept, and relationships, mostly inhuman ones, have broken everything that was once whole. At her feet lies a pool of rubble, pieces of plastic and scraps of the toxic material on which the world now seems to feed. W opens her eyes and looks around. She steps out of her rabbit, now large enough to contain her completely, imprisoned rather than protected by a need for perpetual childhood, in an attempt to feel less of the pain of living in the world as everyone else does.

Outside her “rabbit”, W's body is like a post-war landscape, shattered into a thousand pieces: W will search for them one by one. She discovers that none of the pieces has the same shape or size as before, so the challenge will not only be finding them, but understanding how to put them back into place anyway, despite everything: “I'm just a poor woman with all her pieces… all her pieces… in place! Bastards…”.

W embodies all those people who do not want to die but do not know how to live this life.

An experiential performance: no one will come simply to sit and watch. The audience will bring what they feel and experience, and Ambra-W, through her most unconventional artistic expression, will attempt to give life to all this humanity, which outside the theatre is not always easy to translate into everyday life.

La misteriosa scomparsa di W

by Stefano Benni
with Ambra Angiolini

sound compositions Dardust
lighting designer Marco Filibeck
set design Chiara Modolo
with artistic creations by Cracking Art
directed by Ambra Angiolini
assistant director Beatrice Cazzaro
consultant Gio Reyes
costumes Gentucca Bini
hair stylist GSC Extension Academy - Silvana Copes
stage manager Nicola Pighetti
electrician Federico Calzini
sound engineer Niccolò Bruni
wardrobe Evelin Cacace
photography Serena Serrani

production Teatro Carcano Milano