Jesi, the Piccolo performs "Quie ora," commissioned for Valerio Mastandea.

Jesi (Ancona), October 3, 2025 - "Qui e Ora" by the Teatrofficina company will be performed on Sunday at 5:15 pm at the Piccolo Theater in Jesi. The show will be the first of five competing in the Marche in Atti Regional Festival, organized by Fita Marche. It is one of the plays written by Mattia Torre, an Italian screenwriter, playwright, and director. The work, commissioned for Valerio Mastandrea, depicts the encounter between a renowned chef and an unemployed man after a car accident. The play, which addresses themes of class struggle through comedy and reflection, has also been broadcast on Rai. Teatrofficina's version is directed by Michele Ceppi, with adaptations by Marco Castellani, Luca Cioccolanti, and the director himself. Technical collaboration is by Michele Fioretti and Sergio Giuliani, and the graphic design is by Giada Lancioni. Here is the plot. An accident has just occurred on a side street in an isolated Roman suburb, near the Grande Raccordo Anulare (GRA), completely deserted, with no pedestrians or houses, in the fields, in the middle of nowhere. Two large-engine scooters immediately after the impact, the first overturned, seemingly stuck in the ground, the second unrecognizable, a mess of still-smoking metal. A major accident. On the ground, a few meters from each other, two men in their forties; the first is motionless, possibly dead, the other is barely moving a foot, barely getting up. And the first opens his eyes, too. They need help but won't get it; they need medical attention, but help won't arrive for an hour and a half. Around them, for them, nothing and no one. In a country where if you have an accident with someone, regardless of whether you're right or wrong, they're already your enemy, "Here and Now" tells the story of the clash between two survivors of a scooter accident on the outskirts of a large city, as they wait in despair for help, which never arrives. Their clash expresses the cynicism and sense of struggle of contemporary Italy, a country always ideally on the brink of civil war, where poor administration ends up generating distrust not only among citizens of institutions, but also among themselves, in an increasingly tense and violent climate, which reaches its peak in the big city. During the hour and ten minutes of waiting for help, which is the theatrical tempo of the story, "Here and Now" tells the story of an anxious and violent, comical metropolitan duel between two men who need treatment but won't get it, and who, despite both being victims of the ferocity of our times, recognize each other as enemies: the former imagines himself as an extraordinary man, but is not; the other would know how to be content with his own ordinariness, but he won't.