An emblematic work by Daniele Finzi Pasca – since its creation in 1991, he has performed it more than 800 times, in different languages, and all over the world –, Icaro now returns to the LAC, ready to take the audience into the mind of a dreamer.

“Icaro”, explains Daniele Finzi Pasca, “was created in a very short space of time and the rehearsals lasted only two months. After that, I kept perfecting it. It's a simple show, like the stories my grandmother used to tell me. She taught me the secret for making gnocchi and apple tart, effective methods that I have since systematically used in my theatrical creations. Preparing dinner is just an excuse for meeting people. My grandmother, who never left her kitchen, discovered the entire world just by inviting her family to dinner. I prepare my shows as though they were stories that have to be told looking the audience straight in the eye.
In Icaro I wanted to talk about hope by giving life to an anti-hero, made of the same substance as each of us who often lose and only occasionally, for a moment, actually win. I do theatre for the pleasure of being shipwrecked, of losing myself for a moment. This is one of the healthiest things in life. We get lost as we escape. An inner escape reveals to us who we are.
Escape is a strategy that allows us to dig into reality in order to discover the secrets that appearances hide. I come from a land of mountains. We escape by taking certain risks. There are some mountains that are waiting for us all our lives. They define the vertical horizon of a child's imagination before settling in their memory. Where I come from, there are people who climb their mountains every year, to renew their encounter with what is immutable. Governments change, other children are born in the neighbourhood, our first friends are lost, but the mountains remain there waiting for us. What is wonderful about this encounter with non-time is that we find ourselves have changed and been transformed every time. For an actor, a performance is sometimes one of those occasions when he can escape into himself. They are stories that we tell and find ourselves changed every time we do so. I do theatre to make it rain in the eyes of others, a sort of aqueous massage for the soul. This evening I hope I can make it rain in your eyes too."

In 1994, Icaro received the Premio Florencio as the best foreign show in Uruguay and, in 2009, it won the Montréal English Critics Circle Award (MECCA) as the best foreign show in Canada.