The clothes of a man and a woman,1 bodiless spectators sitting next to one another, laid out on two wooden armchairs from an old Rome cinema. A black monochrome painting hangs on the wall above, from which a triangular silhouette is cut out, revealing beyond the canvas the word ‘end’ engraved into the wall. A phrase in block capitals printed on six strips of canvas above the painting crowns the installation: ‘UN TEATRO PER RESTITUIRE VEROSIMIGLIANZA A L’ESISTENZA CHE È INVEROSIMILE’ (A THEATRE TO RESTORE VERISIMILITUDE TO A LIFE IMPROBABLE). Mauri wrote: ‘For me, theatre is the place of art. Theory, painting, dramaturgy, (i.e.) poetry, perhaps music […] all flow into it. It is a single place, one where art dwells, or willingly tends to dwell. It is not an action consummated at bystander level, but rather a slightly elevated plane of knowledge.’2

1. The clothes are those of the artist and photographer Elisabetta Catalano.
2. F. Mauri, ‘Theatrum unicum artium’, in Lo spazio e la misura, catalogue of the exhibition (Luiss, Rome, 2007), edited by L. Pratesi, Rome, 2007, p. 20.