by Elena Meli
Stefano Fresi and Beatrice Bruschi interpret the podcast “Sometimes I don’t live here” of the Italian League against Epilepsy, taken from the book of the same name, to raise awareness of the disease and break down prejudices
Ten stories, ten lives narrated with the words of the protagonists, to break down the many prejudices that still surround epilepsy: for the first time a scientific society, the Italian League against Epilepsy (LICE), transforms the experiences of those who live with the disease every day into a podcast to raise awareness and fight stigma.
Podcast
The ten episodes, played by actors Stefano Fresi and Beatrice Bruschi, are available on Amazon Music and Spotify and are an adaptation of ten of the many stories contained in the book of the same name, «Sometimes I don’t live here», published ten years ago by LICE. In short, the project was born from afar, with the desire to tell correctly, with delicacy and originality, an illness about which false myths are widespread: «The book contains dozens of stories and poems selected during the literary competition ‘Telling epilepsy ‘ which we launched at the end of 2012 and was very successful”, says Oriano Mecarelli, past president of LICE and editor of the volume. «The authors are people with epilepsy, their family members or caregivers who talk about the disease to make it known to a wide audience and reduce the discrimination in various social fields that people with epilepsy still suffer».
So many stories
So there is the seven-year-old child who thinks that the disease gives him superpowers like the Hulk, the mother who sees the disease as a cloud that obscures the sun, the girl who talks about her adolescence with this ‘darkness’ that suddenly descends to I swallow everything. Reading and now listening to the testimonies of these people helps to understand what it means to live with epilepsy and the choice of the podcast was made «To make the stories more accessible to a wider audience», says Laura Tassi, president of LICE . «The podcast is designed to combine information, entertainment and above all testimony, but also love, suffering and hope. The topic was made immediately accessible, the narrative was lightened to evoke interest in a very delicate topic, for which a more notional narrative would have created distance.” The emotions described in the podcast, however, immediately bring us closer to the experience of those who live with epilepsy and help everyone to understand what this neurological pathology means for the approximately 600 thousand people who suffer from it in our country: a way to understand and be close to people who unfortunately are still stigmatized because too many do not know about their illness.
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November 22, 2023 (modified November 22, 2023 | 09:06)
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