ZOO Presents English Performances of PUGNI DI ZOLFO (FISTS OF SULFUR), Now thru 8/26

It is the early 1930's. A boxer has just undergone a beating in the toughest fight of his career. As he recovers alone in his dressing-room, he whistles a lullaby his mother used to sing - and recalls his childhood amongst the carusi, child workers digging for sulfur in the darkness of a Sicilian mine...

Winner of the 2013 Florence for Fringe competition organised by the Italian Cultural Institute of Edinburgh, PUGNI DI ZOLFO (FISTS OF SULFUR) was inspired by a 1953 poem by Ignazio Buttitta, "A li Matri di li Carusi (To the Mothers of the Carusi)," a damning indictment of the exploitation of hundreds of children. 2,426 carusi, some as young as seven or eight, are recorded as labouring in the Favara mine in 1894 alone.

Actor, writer and director Maurizio Lombardi has woven together a one-man show, telling the brutal yet poignant imaginary story of two of those children, and will be performing it in English at ZOO Southside, at 8.30 p.m. from tonight, 2 to 26 August (not 12 or 21).

Employing minimal props, Lombardi uses his own talent for physicality to create multiple characters and contrast the dark claustrophobic confines of the mine with dreams of a future in sea and sunlight. "PUGNI DI ZOLFO is a simple story that bears the anger of a childhood denied," he explains. "This performance is in memory of all those children who were and are used as mere instruments of work, deprived of their childhood and dignity."

Maurizio Lombardi was born in Florence, but currently lives in Rome, where he works extensively in theatre, cinema and television. He is also the director of the young actors' company at Rome's Teatro Vascello. He has written, directed and performed two previous one-man shows, STILE LIBERO and NO PARTI, and recently starred in the first ever Italian tour of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF William Shakespeare (ABRIDGED).

For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/fistsofsulfur or www.zoofestival.co.uk.

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