Thank you for registering and viewing the Premiere Screening of "Liberi Tutti!"
– A play based on Chesterton’s The Surprise
Available for viewing online from June 20 to 27, 2023
The G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture at Seton Hall University and the Rimini Meeting would like to thank you for registering and for viewing Liberi Tutti!—directed by Otello Cenci and based on G. K. Chesterton’s The Surprise presented online from Tuesday, June 20 to Tuesday, June 27, 2023.
It is always a pleasure and a central part of the work of the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture to offer programs, lectures and conferences to the Chesterton community around the world.
On this occasion, it has been a privilege to collaborate once again with Otello Cenci and the Rimini Meeting to present the International Online Premiere of Liberi Tutti!
To learn more about the Chesterton Institute including upcoming and future events, please visit our website. To learn more about the Rimini Meeting, please visit their website.
To those who participated in the online screening, we would like to extend a couple of invitations. We invite you to:
- Reflect on your experience and leave us a comment using the form below, and
- Subscribe to The Chesterton Review, a journal devoted to exploring the life, work, and ideas of G. K. Chesterton*
*As a token of our appreciation, with your new subscription or renewal, you will receive a complimentary back issue and the complete Index of Contents of the Review as of 1974 (delivered in PDF format).
Thank you again for participating in our international screening and we hope you will join us for future events. For more information or any questions, please contact chestertoninstitute@shu.edu.
About Liberi Tutti!
A production inspired by G. K. Chesterton’s play The Surprise
The main theme is man and his desire for freedom: sometimes uncomfortable, often risky, but always indispensable. A theatrical production of the Rimini Meeting, directed by Otello Cenci; playwright by Otello Cenci and Giampero Pizzol. Literary consultancy by Annalisa Teggi and the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture. In collaboration with Centro Teatrale Bresciano and the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture.
The protagonist of Liberi Tutti! is a puppeteer with a noble heart who writes a simple fairytale comedy to show that telling a story without bad characters and evil deeds is possible. The bet is won, but the puppeteer is not satisfied. For his puppets, he wants a more ambitious future, he does not want them to interpret his work with obedience: for them, he dreams of the miracle of being, and not just acting.
Liberi Tutti! is inspired in a lesser-known work by G. K. Chesterton, The Surprise (1931), written by the English writer for a presentation at the Beaconsfield Theatre, his adopted town. With this text, Chesterton perhaps wanted to respond, in his own way to Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921); it is the theatre play of the theatre, in fact, this also gives body to Chesterton’s text, which differs from the work Pirandello, for its extreme lightness and irony, which are his trademarks with which he treats deep and important themes. The plot, has been reinterpreted for a contemporary audience by Otello Cenci and Giampiero Pizzol, focuses on man and the intimate questions that that animate him, addressing with wit and a surprising attitude the themes of the free love passions and the desire for happiness.
About the Production
The theme of the 2022 Rimini Meeting was “A Passion for the Person.” Otello Cenci remarked: “As I was looking for a work that would deepen the theme of this year’s meeting, I came across the text of Chesterton’s The Surprise. This text has been adapted under the title of Liberi Tutti! which is based on Chesterton’s play written in 1931 for a performance in his hometown of Beaconsfield. Through this text, perhaps Chesterton wanted to answer in his own way to Six Characters in Search of an Author by Pirandello (1921). Otello says: “it is the Metatheatre that gives substance to Chesterton’s text, which differs from Pirandello’s work for its extreme lightness and irony through which profound and important themes are addressed.”
In 1991, Cam Fuller, of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix writes the following: "On one level, it's a simple story about puppets that come to life; perfect children's fair. One step deeper, it's a profound examination of the nature of man's relationship to God, perfect grist for the questioning philosopher in us all.”
In 2015, the Review published a note by the director of the adaptation done by the Storm Theatre in New York: “Chesterton believed that the Incarnation was the idea that was central to civilization. The Surprise is a play, which expresses his conviction in a surprising way. Although incomplete at the time of his death in 1936, it was edited and—perhaps—slightly revised when it was published in 1953 with an admiring Preface by Dorothy L. Sayers."
About the Director of Liberi Tutti!
Otello Cenci is Director of the Performing Arts Division at the Rimini Meeting and Creative and Artistic Director at Made Officina Creativa. He has produced stage adaptations of works by T. S. Eliot, A. Camus and G. Leopardi as well as TV productions (RAI2), and the stage production of Aldo Finzi’s La Serenata al Vento, and has also directed productions of works by Shakespeare, Thomas More and Paul Claudel among others. In 2011, he worked with the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture for the stage production of Chesterton’s The Ballad of the White Horse (Rimini Meeting, 2011); and in 2013 for the production of Chesterton’s Manalive (Rimini Meeting 2013). Mr. Cenci collaborated with the Chesterton Institute for the preparation of the 2022 presentation and release of Liberi Tutti! .