ARJ | Brazil | V. 3, n. 1 | p. 158-170 | Jan. / Jun. 2016 BONFITTO | Still Life Still Life and the NonPhilosophical Stone Matteo Bonftto Universidade Estadual de Campinas – UNICAMP, Brazil A man is sitting on a chair placed stage front. The audience is illuminat- ed with the service light, the stage behind the man is completely dark. He wears a dark gray suit. His attitude is one of dynamic stillness, at the same time incisive and ambiguous. With his column slightly tilted for- ward, he keeps his hands almost joined together. There is something in his hands. He says nothing, verbally; he seems to be observing the public and himself, simultaneously. Looking internally and externally at the same time. A second man enters, takes the chair on which the frst man was sitting away and leaves the stage with it. The man who was sitting does not move: he continues in the same position as if nothing had happened. Slowly, keeping the same attitude, he takes a more vertical position with his spine. He gets up and puts on stage what we now perceive to be a stone. There are two other stones, smaller, close to the one he places on the stage at that moment. The man stands up, buttons up his jacket, still observing the audience for a moment, then turns his back on it. A universe is established by performing such an action. Quietly and un- expectedly, the light over the audience fades out and a huge cloud ap- pears, hovering over the man. We see it partially, only its bottom part with a circular contour. This is not a static representation, but rather one of substances in a gaseous state that continuously move and that refer to a cloud. Given its proportion to the stage, it hovers like a mysterious presence, almost threatening. As if we were catapulted, a universe char- acterized by a horizon devoid of any reference system materializes. Time and space suspended. The man walks slowly to the back of the stage and disappears. Gradually we perceive another man, also wearing a similarly colored suit, advancing toward the proscenium arch. Under the enigmatically hovering cloud, he carries on his back what appears to be a large stone; in this case it is not an ordinary stone but rather one shaped like a wall; a white wall. He drags it to the mouth of the stage, straightens himself up and the wallstone as he does so. At this moment, the silence that had prevailed is interrupted; strange noises are heard coming from the wallrock: it seems to breaking up internally, crumbling, slowly ... (SL, First notes) Approximately four and a half minutes passed from the beginning to the end of the