In Calderón, inspired by La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream), the characters of the original play act in 1967 Francoist Spain, an objective correlative of our present, offered up by history to the definitive collapse of dreams and utopias. The play is shot through with doubt and disorientation, by the ferocious relationship between the individual and the powers that be in a constant alternation between reality and hallucination.

Forming the backdrop to the story is Velázquez's masterpiece Las Meninas, an overpowering and ambiguous painting, which recalls the author's profound relationship with the figurative arts. «It is this transversality of language which continues to mark my work with Teatri Uniti, to fascinate me – explains the director, Francesco Saponaro –because it leads me to take on the expressive references which fill the poetic whole of Pasolini and to push the staging towards a dialogue between cinema and theatre, beginning with the choice of the actors amongst who Anna Bonaiuto and Andrea Renzi stand out».