Autoritratto

The new play by the multi-award-winning artist is on tour in Italy's biggest theatres. With the pure gaze of youth and the unconscious irony that disconcerts Davide Enia recounts the years of lead in Sicily, the presence of Cosa Nostra in the meshes of a society as addicted to silence as to the roar of bombs, where «if you stand in front of a pool of blood, the reflected image is your self-portrait». An eight-year-old boy sees his first dead man killed, while kids‘ balls hit downed shutters and footballers’ stickers vibrate in the air. A teenager discovers for the first time the city where he grew up, amid the rubble of a war waged by the Mafia power. A boy on the threshold of maturity glimpses the abyss between the folds of a generation, and with all the fragility of which he is capable gives a priest with his hours counted his instructions for survival. A man of the theatre lends his voice to three agents of the dia who, like an obsession, a vocation, a duty, have fought and defeated the armed wing of Cosa Nostra. Davide Enia's words run furiously through these pages, through the streets and alleys of a city as addicted to silence as to the roar of bombs, where «if you stand in front of a pool of blood, the reflected image is your self-portrait»

Davide Enia

Davide Enia is a playwright, actor, theatre director and novelist.

His shows are Italia-Brasile 3 a 2 (2002), Scanna (2003), maggio ’43 (2004), I capitoli dell’infanzia (2007), L’abisso (2018). Davide Enia has been awarded the Tondelli Prize at the Riccione Prize (2003), Special Ubu Prize (2003), Hystrio Prize (2005), E.T.I. Prize (2005), Vittorio Mezzogiorno Prize (2006), Gassman Prize (2006). In 2017 he was stage director of Mozart’s opera L’oca del Cairo, at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo.

Davide Enia wrote and performed the radio drama Rembò (2006) for RaiRadio2.
In 2012 he published his first novel, Così in Terra (Baldini & Castoldi Dalai), translated and published worldwide, and awarded in France in 2016 the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger and the Prix Brignoles as best foreign novel of the year. Così in terra is republished by Sellerio in 2023.
His second novel Appunti per un naufragio (Sellerio, 2017) has been published in France, USA, Germany, Spain and awarded the Mondello International Literary Prize (2018).
The novel inspired the show L’Abisso (2018), Hystrio Twister prize for best show of the year, Le Maschere del Teatro prize for Best Monologue Interpreter, Ubu prize for New Italian Text or Dramaturgical Writing.
In 2023 he writes and directs Eleusi with a production by the Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d'Europa.

After a debut met with a standing ovation at every performance at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Enia takes Autoritratto on tour. The production is the result of a co-production involving, among others, CSS Teatro Stabile di Innovazione del Friuli Venezia Giulia and Piccolo Teatro di Milano. The work has also given rise to a book of the same name, Autoritratto. Istruzioni per vivere a Palermo, published by Sellerio in 2025.