An iconic work by Daniele Finzi Pasca, ICARO is a performance created for a single spectator: one privileged audience member, randomly chosen by Daniele, is fully involved on stage, while the others become a kind of voyeur.

Since its creation in 1991, Daniele Finzi Pasca has performed the show over 800 times, for more than 280,000 spectators in 25 countries and in several languages, earning worldwide acclaim.

To mark its 35th anniversary in 2026, ICARO is preparing for an extensive international tour.

CALENDAR

“Icaro was quickly created and rehearsed for two months. Since then, it has been refined over and over again. It is a simple show, much like the stories my grandmother used to tell me. She taught me the secret to making gnocchi and apple pie; precious recipes which I subsequently applied to my theatrical productions. Preparing a meal is a pretext for meeting the world. My grandmother, who never left her kitchen, discovered the world by inviting her family to come and dine. I prepare my shows like stories that must be told while looking the audience in the eye. In Icaro, I wanted to talk about hope by bringing to life anti-heroes, which is how most of us see ourselves. I engage in theatre for the pleasure of drowning myself, of losing myself just a little, which is one of the most worthwhile things in this life. We lose ourselves and escape. When we escape inside ourselves, who we really are is revealed to us. Escape is a strategy that allows us to delve deeper into reality to discover the secrets that are masked by appearances, and to invent new utopias. I come from a mountainous land. Where I am from, we escape by taking risks. Mountains will await you throughout your entire life. They define the vertical horizon of the child’s imagination before becoming engraved in memory. Where I am from, there are people who climb their mountain every year so as to renew their ties with that which does not change. Governments change, children are born, we lose our oldest friends, but mountains remain forever, unchanged. The wonderful thing about an encounter outside of time is that on every such occasion, we discover that we are different, transformed. A performance for an actor is sometimes one of the places where he can escape within himself. He will continue to tell these stories, and each time he does, he will find that Icaro is one of the mountains I have been climbing for the past twenty years. Through theatre, I strive to rain in the eyes of others; a moist massage for the soul. I will tell you my story in English but I will continue to think in Italian, my first language. This evening, I hope to succeed in making the rain fall in your eyes.”

Daniele Finzi Pasca

The founders and producers of Compagnia Finzi Pasca:
Antonio Vergamini, Daniele Finzi Pasca, Hugo Gargiulo, Julie Hamelin Finzi and Maria Bonzanigo.