Vado e non torno is a project that aims to test the disciplinary boundaries and performative mediums by appropriating and transposing concepts associated with glitch art—an exploration of error and fictionalized reality—seeking to understand and represent “real-time.”

With artistic direction and performance by Óscar Silva and Mauricio P. Castro, who also take on dramaturgy, this piece unfolds exclusively in the real plane, implicating the body of the other, who simultaneously co-creates and observes. In Vado e non torno, Mauricio P. Castro draws from Chapter 6 of Ulysses by James Joyce to take the solitary performer (Óscar Silva) and the audience on an introspective and ironic journey through death and the beyond. In the dark space we might call a stage, we witness the actor’s nearly always failed attempts to emerge from the shadows and proclaim the grandeur of the performative moment.

Contrary to artistic creation as a cohesive and meaningful unity, Vado e non torno—centered on the presence of both maker and spectator—explores the heightened awareness of the artistic event as an impure occurrence. It embraces risk and unpredictability, not as disposable obsolescence but as a critical methodology. Interwoven with Joyce’s narrative of Bloom’s dark voyage, the performer leads us through the depths of an underworld, revealing the story of an explorer in Polcenigo, Italy, and his existential and romantic experiences in places such as Gorgaz and Orrido di Val Celina. The staging consistently pushes the limits of time and human perception, inviting the audience to confront the ephemerality of life and the eternity of death. The conflict resides in the physical presence of the audience, which is challenged and redefined as the performance questions conventional notions of reality and mortality, revealing "Hell" as a metaphor for time measured in both seconds and millennia.

In this existential plunge, the performance transcends the borders of traditional theatrical narrative, forcing the audience to confront their own mortality and explore the mysteries of the beyond.

This performance is dedicated to Sylvia Soares.